A FAMILY QUARREL An Allegorical Study in American Origins and Principles GEORGE MURRAY KLEPFER, D. D. Author of "The Young Man's Best Friends" Introduction by REV. S. PARKES CADMAN, D. D., LL. D., New York City AUTHOR'S EDITION CARLISLE, PENN'A E'l 79 .K^'A^ The Author makes grateful acknowledgment of valuable assistance given in the preparation of this volume, by the following: Dr. Leon C. Prince, Department of History, in Dick- inson College. Dr. B. O. McIntire, Department of English and American Literature in Dickinson College. Dr. Orlando B. Super, Professor of Romance Lan- guages, in Dickinson College. Copyright 1913, by GEORGE MURRAY KLEPFER. ^/ d-^i QCi.A851507 DEDICATION: To W. C. QUINN, M. D., In grateful remembrance of the tender and inspiring FRIENDSHIP OF OUR EARLIER YEARS, This book is most affectionately DEDICATED. INTRODUCTION. Pericles exhorted the Athenians to contemplate the greatness of their city until they became en- raptured with its fame and beauty. He pointed exultantly to those achievements in art, literature, science and philosophy which had made the Queen of the Grecian isles the teacher of the nations and the vital center of classic civilization. "We do not copy our neighbors/' said the ancient statesman, "but are an example unto them; and we rely, not upon management nor trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands." Any similar exhortation that fosters in the hearts of Americans a deeper love for our Re- public and a proper pride in its achievements should be warmly welcomed throughout the land. Nor can intelligent patriotism render a better ser\^- ice than to furnish a more accurate knowledge and kindle a more just appreciation of the deter- mining factors in our national evolution. For a nation, like an individual, has a soul as well as a body. The deeper secrets of its being are hid- 6 A FAMILY QUARREL. den beneath the surface events of its history. Those who view only the external features of the United States, are apt to be misled in their estimates, and they generally mislead others who hastily accept as true their superficial notions. "The things which are seen are temporal, the things which are unseen are eternal," and the lat- ter essentials are only revealed to reverent and patient research. The underlying and permanent realities which make the philosophy of history must be sifted from the accidents and appearances which change with every momentary disturbance. Such realities explain the past and indicate the way of the future: they also inevitably falsify any forecasts which do not reckon on their ef- fectual working. It is the object of Dr. Klepfer^s book to fur- nish a vantage ground of peculiar interest to the student, whereon he can stand to survey our na- tion's past and anticipate its future. It is in- spired by a fine temper of Christian optimism, and prompts in those who read it a more commanding and moralised passion for the glorious land of their birth or adoption. In a day of severe and INTRODUCTION. measurably deserved criticism of our institutions and social shortcomings, this busy yet scholarly pastor bids us turn aside and remember all the way the hand of God has led His chosen people these many years. To that God we render praise and homage, and we share the author^s faith and inspiration for a national growth towards the noblest attainable ideals. For these and other reasons we heartily commend Dr. Klepfer's mod- est production and would bespeak for it a wide circulation and a careful perusal. S. PAEKES CADMAN. Central Church, Brooklyn. May 23, 1913. SOME FOEEWOKDS The Author's Purpose Scope and Character of the Book Limitations of the Story This Particular Quarrel Quarrelsome People A Family Worth Knowing SOME FOREWORDS. 11 ^JTT The story with which these pages have to ^1 1 1 do revolves around the greatest moral and ^] I political movement of modern times. The author's sole purpose in telling it again, thus increasing the already voluminous litera- ture on the subject, is to help American citi- zens, and those seeking to become such, to value more highly the great price paid through more than a thousand years of struggle, in blood and tears, for that great thing called American Christian Civilization; and to help, as well, toward a more intelligent and reasonable understanding of the age-old principles upon Avhich American citizenship is based. And how very interesting it is to go back and trace the causes which, in the remote past, had so much influence in shaping the outward forms of our religion and our Government, as well as in refining and chastening their spirit. Whatever may be our objection to the Puritans, and they were not without their faults any more than we are without faults, it may be said with certainty that on this side of the world the vast majority of Christian congregations, and the chief institu- tions of our Eepublic, are still under the influence of their principles and opinions to a very large extent. So much so, indeed, that it is impos- sible for us to understand ourselves, or to know 12 A FAMILY QUARBEL. our origin and history as a people, without an acquaintance with the great struggle for liberty of conscience in England and on the continent of Europe in the century preceding the first settlements in New England. And this momen- tous struggle was but the fruit of a tree planted far back toward the very beginnings of human history. This tree had been wracked by many a storm until at times it seemed as though it would be uprooted from the earth, but it has grown through the ages, spreading its branches over the nations and is to-day dropping its seed into the fertile soil of all the lands of the earth. In order to give some degree of unity and coherence, as well as of romantic interest, to the story, it is cast into a mildly allegorical form. The writer fully recognizes the limitations of this literary form. The reader, therefore, needs to be reminded at the beginning that this is not intended to be a detailed history, but rather a broad general survey — a sort of bird's-eye view, — of a great movement which covered centuries and involved the most vital interests and insti- tutions of the peoples of two continents. The incidents are made to turn upon the two cardinal principles of our Kepublican government. Civil Liberty and Federal Union. The varying fortunes of these two fundamental principles are SOME FOREWORDS. 13 traced from their earliest available historical sources down the stream of Democracy until they are brought together in the Constitution of the United States, and until, nearly a century later, they are subjected to that severest of all tests of stable government, the crucial fires of a great Civil War. Out of that dual bath of blood and fire the re-united Family arose in fairer renown and with heightened prestige among the nations. Her free institutions were settled upon deeper and stronger foundations and she was cemented in every fiber of her frame in a more lasting Union. Having rid herself, in the awful testing, of a lot of accumulated impedimenta, she came forth to live a new life and bear a new mes?age to the world. A very popular modern writer once said, "Orig- inality is not an addition to knowledge; it is only a new arrangement of color." No claim what- ever is here made of having discovered any new facts of history; the utmost degree of originality the author can assure his readers of is simply a new arrangement of color. These pages pro- fess to contain neither a history nor a philosophy of the great Puritan movement. The author has gleaned in many fields through many years and has seen some of the old facts in a new light and from a new angle which have given 14 A FAMILY QUARREL. them new meanings to him. To interpret these new meanings is his present task. The intelli- gence of the reader is relied upon to apply them to the problems of the present time. If the tell- ing of the story does not suggest the applications it would be a vain task to stop at every point and label them. This particular Quarrel occurred about half a century ago. History records no equal fratricidal strife. Such was the malignity of hatred, and such the bitterness of the conflict, that to the utmost each party to the quarrel sought the other's destruction. For half a hundred years the passions and prejudices of men had been in- flamed by angry discussions and by partisan ap- peals and evasive compromises, until, almost in an hour, the pent-up, smoldering fires burst forth like a blast from hades, sweeping a continent with their wild hungry flames, threatening the suicide of a nation and the destruction of the greatest political edifice ever dedicated to the rights and conscience of mankind. Yet under the same ample roof they live in perfect peace and harmony to-day. The fact of the Quarrel can never be forgotten — indeed it ought never to be forgotten. It has been written so deeply into the imperishable pages of his- tory that the story of the human race cannot SOME FOREWORDS. 15 be told, without mentioning this event, the mo- mentous issues of which are destined to affect the weal of the world until the end of time. But the bitterness and the passion of the feud are rapidly dying out, and the most cordial emo- tions of fraternity are reasserting themselves. The writer feels assured that every reader of these pages will join him, devoutly and heartily, in the prayer that such menacing clouds may never again darken the skies that overarch a land which is the home of more happy people than any other land on the face of the earth. Quarrelsome people do not, as a rule, make the most desirable acquaintances. The Family now under consideration, however, is not a quarrelsome Family. Though they have had some mighty struggles, and though almost every step of their progress has been contested by enemies who would have rejoiced in defeating their high des- tin}^ they are essentially a peace-loving and, what is more, a peace-making Family; for though ex- tremely youthful, they have already taken their place in the very front of the nations that seek the peace of the world. For many reasons this Family is well worth knowing, and worth know- ing well; and as our acquaintance familiarizes us with their many excellences of character, and with the high idealism and splendid heroisms of 16 A FAMILY QUAEEEL. their phenomenal history, we shall find ourselves wanting to know them even better, our apprecia- tion increasing in the ratio of our familiarity with them. Perhaps few families are more liable to mis- understanding on a mere surface acquaintance; certainly few more richly repay the effort to un- derstand their genius and character thoroughly. No other Family lives more conspicuously in the open eye of the world. And yet the world at large, with its characteristic superficial judg- ment, has been anything but fair in its estimates. In order to avoid this all-too-common error let us look beneath the surface of their peculiar genius, and trace back the confluent streams of their history to as nearly definite sources as pos- sible. SOME FAMILY HISTORY. Seminal Ideas Anglo-Saxon Danes and Normans Primitive Philosophy ** Time's Noblest Offspring'* New Seed for New Soil Mixed Bloods The Master Passion SOME FAMILY IIISTOEY. 19 ^JTT At the very outset we shall discover that H^l I both sides of this noted Family are de- ^1 1 seended from ancient and royally dis- tinguished ancestry. And as we pursue the study we shall perhapjs with some difficulty per- suade ourselves that we are really studying sober history, and not perusing some Arabian Nights dream. Every great race that has left its impress upon the civilization of the world has been the em- bodiment of some great idea. Around this semi- nal idea the life of the race has developed and its institutions have crystallized. Among the Persians this germinal idea was light. The daily prayer of the Egyptian was "Give me wealth." The lavish Nile washed all his lands with gold, and world-circling traffic roared through mart and street. With the Greek this idea was beauty. To him the world was plastic and vocal, and was peopled with imaged grace and light, finding ex- pression in poetry and sculpture and music and philosophy. Among the Eomans it was power. The vast world was chained a captive to the chariot of his pride. He believed the world was made to be conquered and that he was made to conquer it. The blood of myriad provinces was drained to feed the insatible greed of his fierce red heart. With the Hebrew it was the purity 20 A fa:siily quarrel. of moral truth — the sovereignty of conscience. He became the slave of the Idea, and though spumed and scourged, with none to save, he be- came inmiortal through the Truth. No floods devour him, neither do the fires consume. With the Anglo-Saxons the dominant idea was civil liberty, a great seminal idea made mighty and fruitful throughout the world by its four-fold baptism of Spiritual Christianity. It will not be seriously questioned that the two races which beyond all others have left their imperishable impress upon the civilization of the world are the Hebrew and the Anglo-Saxon — the one descended through thousands of years from a single f amity without admixture, the other holding in its veins the choicest extract of the best bloods of humanity. A brief review of the dominant characteristics of these two great races, the Anglo-Saxon and the Hebrew, is not only interesting and instructive but is really essen- tial to the proper setting of this storj^ The island of Britain, separated from the main- land of Europe by a narrow strip of sea, with excellent soil and tempered climate, was admir- ably adapted to breeding a robust population. From the fifth to the seventh centuries of the Christian era it was occupied and possessed by tribes from [N'orthern Europe, Saxons, Angles and SOME FAMILY HISTORY. 21 Jutes, offspring of the strongest race of history. This race already had been schooled in courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea- faring adventure. They were uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the decaying civ- ilization of Kome, but were ready for whatever knowledge and religion Eome could give them. The Angles in their continental home were es- sentially a clean and virile race unpolluted by the excesses of Southern Europe. After much warring with one another, and with their Dan- ish kin, they became fused into a nation of Englishmen, and for five centuries lived an isolated life— long enough to deeply ingrain a strong and independent character. These Anglo-Saxons, as they were named, were a sturdy and vigorous, though homely and unlettered, race. Latest born of the three sis- ter races, in the decay of the other two, the Latin and the Greek, they conserved the best elements of both and brought into the world a new genius and gave to civilization a new character. They had the idea of liberty of person, checked by loyalty to another who was called chief, but unchecked by anything else. As pirates and sea- robbers they descended on England and found the Celtic Briton, originally as warlike as them- selves, but now weakened by four or five cen- 22 A FAMILY QUARREL. turies of protection by Eoman soldiers — and drove these Britons from the coast of the N'orth Sea, and later forced them out into the western extremities. The natural affinities of the Anglo- Saxons predisposed them toward Christianity. Naturally dominated by manly moral instincts, religion has changed their native character per- haps less than it has changed that of any other race. In this Anglo-Saxon race we find the founda- tions and elements of a high civilization. They are slower, but sounder; less careful of what is agreeable and elegant/ but more solidly based upon what is true and just. "It was no accident that the great Reformation of the sixteenth cen- tury originated among a Teutonic, rather than a Latin people. It was the fire of liberty burning in the Saxon heart that flamed up against the absolutism of the Pope." It is one of the simp- lest facts of history that where the Teutonic blood is purest there the principles of liberty and de- mocracy spread most rapidly. The love of lib- erty early ran strong in the German blood, but it remained for the Saxon to fully recognize the right of the individual to himself, and to plant that rock formally as the cornerstone of govern- ment. In everything, even in his rude and barbarous SOME FAMILY HISTORY. instincts, the Saxon was always a man. His pre- dominant temperamental quality was a manly in- dependence. Each in his own home, on his land or in his hut, was his own master, upright, free and brave. The coward he buried in mud under a hurdle. The adulterer he punished with death. The adulteress was compelled to hang herself or was stabbed to death by her companions. He be- lieved there was something sacred in woman. He married one and was faithful to her. His regard for woman was based on her as a partner in the home rather than as a sweetheart before marriage. Independence and free air were his two prime essentials. While he had no mind for mild pleasures and craved violent excitement, yet he spurned voluptuousness and was severe in his manners and education. His rusty faculties could not, perhaps, follow clear lines of poetic imagery, yet he did catch glimpses, even in his rude and troubled dreams, of the sublime— not seeing it perhaps, but feeling it in primitive sim- plicity. He was not an idolater in the gross sense of that word. True, he had his gods, but he did not ''bow down to wood and stone." He possessed a strong sense of that mysterious in- finity which "reverence alone can feel.'' The Danes, another branch of this same race, about the end of the eighth century poured south- 24 A FAMILY QUARREL. ward out of their bleak and barren regions, and for two hundred years the Black Eaven was the scourge and terror of the Saxon homes and Kings of England. They were a fierce and pirat- ical race. The boast of their sea-kings was that "they had never slept under smoky rafters." Their code of honor was, "A brave man ought to attack two; stand firm against three; may give ground a little to four, and ought to retreat only from five." They believed in immortality — rather a sanguinary immortality, to be sure — where in Valhalla they would hew each other forever in bloodless conflict and drink their ale from cups of hollowed skulls. With no territory but the waves, and no dwell- ings but their stout two-sailed ships, they laughed at the storm while they lustily sang, "The blast of the tempest aids our oars." But they were more than pirates, they were bold and daring navigators and discoverers and colonizers. Passing up the Humber and Trent rivers, they made this part of England especially theirs, a district which became famous as ''The Pilgrim Country," with Auster field as the upper limit and East Eetford and Worksop as the lower right and left respectively. Defiling Christian churches seems to have been a favorite pastime SOME FAMILY HISTORY. 25 with these Danish invaders. If caught in this vandalism they were flayed alive and their skins nailed to the doors of the churches. Bits of human skin found under the old nail-heads of the heavy oaken church-doors have been depos- ited in the British Museum. Slaying the priests at the altars, and using books as kindling to bum the monasteries, they sought to sweep at once both letters and religion from the earth. And they well nigh succeeded, for the light of intelligence was almost extin- guished and Saxon England was brought down almost to its primitive barbarism. They be- queathed a distinct physical type and left the im- press of their influence on the Saxon language and on the Saxon manners— an influence not yet effaced. The stains of their primitive paganism have never been bleached out altogether. It was from these sea-wolves who lived on the pillage of the world, the English derived the larger part of their maritime enterprise and military pres- tige. It was the large admixture of that old Danish fierce fighting blood in American veins that won American liberties in the seventies of the eighteenth century and preserved them un- sullied in their integrity before the world in the sixties of the nineteenth century; and while the same proportion of that old blood continues 26 A FAMILY QUARREL. to circulate in the American system, friends and foes alike may dismiss all anxiety as to the ability of Americans to take care of themselves. Into this homely and vigorous Saxon stock was grafted the chivalry and splendor and pride of the Normans, a Scandinavian tribe with a changed nature — Christianized in the medieval sense, and civilized. It was a race full of strange contradic- tions, — poetic, brave, adventurous. They were originally of Saxon stock, but their blood had been warmed and their wit quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country of the Franks. In after centuries they contributed to Saxon Eng- land her great scholars and statesmen, and to Europe the very flower of her chivalry. In re- finement of manners, in artistic taste of pleasing, in war-like enterprises and in improved weapons of warfare as well as in intellectual culture, they were superior to the Anglo-Saxon, and the com- mingling of their blood contributed new impulses and higher ideals to the national character. Long before the Norman had left his Northern home he had been brought into contact with those great reservoirs of civilization to which modern Europe owes so much. "The peculiar quality of his genius was its suppleness,'^ says a modern author. "He was po- SOME FAMILY HISTORY. 27 lite, elegant, graceful, talkative, dainty, super- ficial. Beauty pleased, rather than exalted him. Nature was pretty, rather than grand, never mys- tical. Love was a pastime rather than a de- votion. Woman impressed him less by any spirit- ual transcendance than by a ^vastly becoming smile,' a ^sweet and perfumed breath,' a form 'white as new-fallen snow upon a branch.' " He studied to display his skill and courage "for the meed of glory," and to "win the applause of the ladies by magnificence in dress and armor." It is this same spirit in his American Saxon de- scendants that finds vent on Fourth of July and other hip-hip-hurrah occasions — all of which however are but exuberant frills upon a truly great and splendid character. The Normans intermarried with the French, borrowed largely from French manners and cus- toms which they imported into England, and they introduced into Saxon speech at least a third part of its words. Like the Danes, they were born sailors. They became the leading race in North- ern Europe and gave to England the greater 23art of her mercantile greatness. And Norman blood, though widely diffused and greatly en- ervated by inferior admixtures, has never yet lost its natural heroism and love of power. It re- quired, if we may judge by the language, about 28 A FAMILY QUAEBEL. three hundred years for the Saxons to absorb them with their love of art, their devotion to learning and their talent for founding institutions, though the Saxons were to them in the propor- tion of about forty to one. "On the dividing line between the Eoigland of the Normans and the England of the English stands Chaucer, almost the last beacon-light of foreign influence, and the first poet of English speech." Such then, are the origins and some of the leading characteristics of the ancestors of this great Saxon Family — a Family that has vindi- cated its capability in great enterprises, has pre- served unbroken through the centuries its free spirit, and which, in its life and literature, has furnished the pioneers of progress and the moral and spiritual leaders and teachers of the world. Their primitive philosophy was without ab- stractions. Their metaphysics overleaped all categories. Their history is like tales woven from the dreams of giants. Their early litera- ture is like pictures reflected from running streams. Their later literary genius became capa^ ble of combining such remarkable extremes as the "myriad-mindedness" of Shakespeare and the Puritanism of Milton, the polished graces of Addison and the odd follies of Swift, the soli- dity of Johnson and the sadness and madness of SOME FAMILY HISTORY. 29 Byron, the serious philosophy of Browning and the entrancing music of Tennyson, the stately periods of Macauley and the virile strength of Kipling. A voluminous literature that, in prose and poetry and science and philosophy and sober history and picturesque romance, combines in unequaled proportions all the qualities that en- ter into a great and permanent literature. Their very superstitions were but the tremors of the mighty forces pent-up within them and clamoring for expression. They needed but the wise direction of an intelligent Christian faith to develop a moral and intellectual and spiritual character unequaled in strength and quality among the races of the world. What a prophecy for the future of this amal- gamated race do these great ideas of civil and social justice, and of inherent personal rights, which were suspended in the chaos of their un- tamed imagination, declare Could any pos- sible dream of future greatness and power be regarded as extravagant ? We are not surprised, therefore, after centuries of education and sub- jection to Christian principles, to find that this vigorous and virile race has practically accom- plished the domination of the world. Though it comprises only one fifteenth of the world's popu- lation, it nevertheless rules more than one-third 80 A FAMILY QUARREL. of its surface and one-fourth of its inhabitants, and is multiplying more rapidly than the com- bined races of Continental Europe. Perhaps the best representatives of this race the world ever saw were those who comprised the first settlers of our Country and the founders of our Government. It has been well said that '*God sifted the races of the Old World for seed with which to sow the virgin soil of the New;" or, to change the figure, God distilled the com- bined bloods of the races of the world, and then poured the quintessence of their choicest extract into American veins. You will appreciate more highly your rich American inheritance if you will analyze your blood. What a strange medley of racial elements it contains! There is Norman blood, hence dig- nity and chivalry, art and architecture, sentiment and romance. There is Celtic blood, hence wit and humor, valor and eloquence. There is Dan- ish blood, hence hardihood and love of the sea, and a sublime conceit of ability to take care of ourselves. There is German blood, hence love of order, pertinacity of purpose, high esteem for women, love of home and cultivation of the soil and love of native land and reverence for re- ligion and law. And if there be any other blood containing elements of greatness, that blood will SOME FAMILY HISTORY. 31 doubtless be found to account for any other Anglo-Saxon American virtues not otherwise ac- counted for — all combining to form a positively new race, — a race inheriting the distinctive pe- culiarities of the best of the Teutonic, Celtic, and Roman tribes of Europe — a race destined, as we believe, to the sovereignty of the world. They love colonization and conquest. Judge Story says they excel all others in pushing their way out into new territory. They are the world's pioneers in the best sense of the word. Charles Dickens was reported to have said while in this country, that the typical American would hesitate to enter Heaven, unless assured that if he ever desired to do so he might go farther west. This statement has had a remarkable exemplifi- cation in our recent history. We have gone so far ''west" we have gotten clear round into the ''East." For America there is no longer any west. As some wag remarked: "On American territory the sun never sets, — and no other na- tion ever sits. ' ' HEBREW IDEALS AND IDEAS Sources of Power ^'The Schoolmaster of the Nations" Historical Recogi^tion Supreme Gifts The Four Baptisms A Combination op Ideas and Brains AND Blood HEBREW IDEALS AND IDEAS. 35 ^nT But whence came these elements of ^1 1 1 greatness in this Anglo-Saxon race ? And ^1 1 whence the great ideas of civil and per- sonal rights and the equality of all men before the law? And whence the application of the law of retribution for the wicked and of reward for the righteous to the conduct of societies and of states? The historical as well as the moral answer to these questions is, The Hebrew Race. And who shall say if the work of this great He- brew race be finished? There be those who de- clare its work is done, and that for the future their Prophets and writings may be rated with the authors and literature of Egypt and India. But no race can be considered dead so long as the principles which actuated it live among the na- tions. No speech is dead while it is vocal with living ideas. The Greek will never die, because his is the language of poetry and philosophy and eloquence. Rome survives in the barbaric hordes that swept over the Continent absorbing the con- querors, giving them her language and largely shaping their institutions. This Hebrew race, strong and virile and ever loyal to the traditions, high and ancient, of their fathers — this race is not dead. It deserves bet- ter things than it has received at the hands of history to which it has given many of its most 36 A FAMILY QUABBEL. famous men and many of its most illustrious achievements. The contribution it has made to the permanent progress of the world has been immeasurable. To the shame of history it must be confessed that in no instance has similar ser- vice met with so little recognition or kindled so faint a glow of gratitude. We are indebted to this Hebrew race for prac- tically all the great moral ideas which underlie the entire fabric of our modern American Chris- tian civilization. In fact the Hebrew has fur- nished the moral and religious reservoir from w^hich practically the whole world has draA^^l the moral tonic of its daily social life. The force of these ideas in the reformatory crises of history has been beyond possible human estimate. With- out them there could not have been a Luther nor a Reformation, a Washington nor an Ameri- can Republic. No other nation held such a wide and inefface- able distinction between right and wrong, or clung with, such tenacity and uncompromising integrity to the ideas of retribution swift and certain for iniquity, and of ultimate blessedness for the righteous. These ideas they applied re- morselessly to nations and states, teaching that there can be no permanent peace or prosperity except through perfect obedience to the ]Moral HEBREW IDEALS AND IDEAS. 37 Law. The School-Master of the nations, it has ever been the task of the Hebrew to quicken and arouse the sleeping conscience of the world and prepare the way for liberty. These ideas are what gave point and power to the preaching of Savonarola and Calvin, awak- ened the demand for liberty in the Netherlands and in England; constituted the basal rock upon which were builded alike the jurisprudence and the theology of New England. What tongues of fire they gave to Garrison and Phil- lips and Sumner and the Beechers in the dis- cussions which culminated in the Civil War and the emanciptaion of the slave. It has been said truly that in the preparation of the nations for and in the attainment of a purer national life it has ever been the ideas of the Hebrew Theocracy that have had the most stimulating and unrelenting force. Their great- ness in moral conceptions and the thoroughness with which their sublime and inspired ideals have permeated all the new literatures, particu- larly the English and the German, constitute the imperishable monuments to their intellectual and moral power. Every renewal of literary life among the Germans has been accelerated by Hebrew ideas. Luther's Bible did for the Ger- man language what King James' did for the 38 A FAMILY QUABEEL. English. In all the noblest literary monuments of both the English and the German are found traces deep and clear, in both language and ideas, of the original Hebrew inspiration. Better to have given the world this rich inheritance of moral motive and moral power than to have built the Pyramids or reared the triumphal arch of world-empire. The Hebrew may not have given the world any breathing sculpture, or speaking canvas, nor be- queathed to its weary generations any great scientific discoveries, but he has given that with- out which art and science, literature and philoso- phy would be but the poor thin gildings of a cos- mopolitan inferno. He has given the human race both the historical and the moral basis of Chris- tianity, and its spiritual character and ideal, as well as its ethical standards. The cheap sneers so jauntily perpetrated against the Hebrew should be constantly rebuked, and historical reverence and recognition ever accorded the great race that has given to the Avorld's jurisprudence its Moses, to the world's poetry its David, to the world's pioneers their Abraham, to the world's literature its Isaiah, to the world's ethics its Paul, and to the world's religion both its Bible and its Christ, for, as Lessing 's friar says, "Jesus was himself a Jew." HEBEEW IDEALS AND IDEAS. 39 That old Hebrew Faith was not the mean, narrow, shriveled thing that is often mistaken for it. True, it was clothed with endless routine, and filled with apparently small trivialities and laborious formalities, but it was a Faith of cen- tral truths and ideal principles. It was a re- ligion creative, suggestive, impulsive — as radical in its analysis as it was inspiring in its visions. Out from it has come, as stream from fountain, redeemed individualism as the secret of social wealth and progress, and personal integrity as the soul of peace and prosperity. Noble and in- spiring was that old religion ! In its Ideal lives the secret of all social progress in the past and the potency of all advancement in the future. It was the great good fortune of this young Family to receive four distinct baptisms of vision and power from it. The first baptism came in the person of Chris- tian soldiers sent by the Empire to the Celtic Britains to hold this important out-post. There were probably many Centurions, other than those named in the New Testament, who were happy in bowing before the Jewish teaching of a Su- preme Kuler. This first contact with this great Faith was prior to the fifth century. This Chris- tian teaching was crushed by the Saxon invasion in England but survived in Ireland. Fi'om 40 A FAMILY QUAEKEL. thence came missionaries in the seventh century to evangelize Northern England, as St. Augustin a few years before had done in Kent. This was the second baptism of Hebrew and Christian ideas. Again the Christian teaching was crushed out by the barbarian in the Danish invasion of the ninth and tenth centuries in all save in Wessex and in Kent. The third great baptism came with the Normans in the eleventh centu^3^ They brought with them scholars and priests and built churches and monasteries. The fourth and great- est of all these baptisms came in the Reformation, beginning with the teachings of Wycliffe and the Lollards, and culminating in the separation of the English church from Rome in the sixteenth century. It was the greatest because the way had been prepared for it by the revival of learn- ing, and the Greek and Latin classics, and the Greek Testament. Probably the civil rulers of the day did not realize that in breaking with Rome they were aiding the cause of Civil Liberty. Along with the Jewish teachings, now com- pleted by the greatest of all Jews, came Roman law and civic philosophy. These two truths, where they had a chance, made men free. It took time, however. The splendid conception of a city of G^ — a redeemed humanity — has not HEBREW IDEALS AND IDEAS. 41 even yet emerged a veritable and luminous fact among men. But the teachers and the poets of the ages have kept the vision fresh and alive in the hearts of men, and have helped tre- mendously from age to age to shape human in- stitutions so that they would help toward its realization; and here in America we have ap- proached a little nearer to it than has been ac- complished anywhere else on earth. And this splendid family, in the eager flush of its buoyant youth has its face set steadily toward it. Heaven has favored them with such an equipment for its consummation as has been given no other race or nation. Hebrew ideas and Anglo-Saxon blood and brain, genius and enterprise, are the main fac- tors of our American Christian Civilization. The materials out of which the keel and ribs of our mighty Ship of State were constructed were rescued from a rush-basket floating among the flags of the river Nile. Talk about your mighty ships that plough the briny deeps, carrying their precious cargoes of human treasure and human life ! That little rush-basket ship carried the concentrated extract of the world's religion and law and civilization for four thousand years. It was well worth the welcome of a Princess Royal at its landing. THE EOMA:NrCE BEGINS. From Holland to England A Family op Wealth and Distinction Reversal op Family Fortunes A Fair Maiden With Progressive Ideas The Inevitable Young Man With Revolutionary Notions ''Love at First Sight" ^ THE ROMANCE BEGINS. 45 And now the real romance of the stoiy begins. Under the dreadful persecutions in- spired and led throughout their lives by Philip II and the Duke of Alva — a persecution cover- ing eighty years — about one hundred thousand Hollanders crossed the channel and made their homes in the eastern and southern counties of England. They came from a land of public schools and universities. Each man brought his Bible Avhich he could read for himself and for his neighbor. They were industrious, self-support- ing men, scholars, manufacturers, bankers, mer- chants, all of them freemen and refugees for freedom's sake and for conscience sake. They were men, brave men, grand men, men construct- ed out of the very prodigality of nature, massive in intellect and in soul. Perhaps never in the history of the world was there a missionary move- ment on so grand a scale. They were capable of teaching the people among whom they settled, commerce, agriculture, banking, the trades, re- publican politics, and above all, the true religion. Their daily life was a daily sermon on Christian virtue and temperance and chastity. It was out of these counties, into which the Dutch came from Holland, that Cambridge had arisen, that educational centre of broad scien- 46 A FAMILY QUABBEL. tific thought and Puritanism, which gave America the first scholars and leaders of New England. Out of these counties the English Commonwealth sprung, and Cromwell sprung, and from them Cromwell's army was mustered, and the famous *'01d Ironsides." Above all, it was from this region, impressed by Dutch ideas and imbued with Dutch principles, and filled, through intermarriage, with Dutch blood that the great exodus to America came — the Pilgrim exodus which made New England what it has been. From these counties came the church of John Robinson from Scrooby, tarry- ing a while in Holland, and then coming to Plymouth as the Pilgrim Fathers. At the time of this great exodus from Hol- land to England there lived in Holland many families of great wealth. They were the Rocke- fellers and Carnegies of their time, while in political influence they far surpassed any of the rich men of the present. Among these, and one of the most wealthy and influential, was a family which had its headquarters in Augs- burg, and a powerful branch of the family in Antwerp. Some of the members of the Ant- werp branch of the family found their way into England at the time of which we are writing. It ought to be said of this particular Augs- THE EOMANCE BEGINS. 47 burg family that they were liberal patrons of art and literature, having their houses filled with rare paintings and costly books. They sup- ported musicians and artists, and founded hos- pitals and schools and charitable institutions al- most without number. The foundation of the wealth of this family was laid in the honorable trade of linen weaving and the commerce per- taining thereto. It is told of the founder of the family that on one occasion when Emperor Charles V. was viewing the royal treasures at Paris he exclaimed, "there is a linen weaver at Augsburg who could pay as much as this with his own gold.'' x\nd of him another story is related that, receiving a visit from the emperor on one occasion, he heated the halls of his princely dwelling with cinnamon-wood, and kindled the fires with bonds for an immense sum, representing money borrowed from him by his royal guest. That kind of hospitality would be calculated to warm the heart of any debtor-guest who might be permitted to enjoy it. The Antwerp branch of this family in Eng- land intermarried with the English aristocracy and royalists of the most pronounced type. For a long time they were prosperous and influen- tial, but the Holland blood in their veins re- sponded with alarming cordiality to strangely 48 A FAMILY QUABEEL. revolutionary doctrines which began to be preached. Meanwhile the family fortunes had somewhat changed. With the terrific exactions of the English crown, trade suffered and com- merce was for a time well nigh paralyzed. These Hollanders had not forgotten the tra- ditions and freedom of their old home. The University of Leyden, where their fathers had been educated, had been erected to celebrate the raising of the siege by the Spaniards. The first act of the relieved people had been to as- semble in their churches and on bended knees give thanks to God for their deliverance. The men assembled in the churches on that day were the fathers of the men who thirty-five years later opened their homes and hearts to the exiled Pil- grim Fathers. In course of time there was born into the home of an Englishman, whose wife was in di- rect descent from this noted Antwerp family, a baby girl. She was proudly christened Federal Union by her parents. This little girl grew up into womanhood amid stirring times in which the greatest civil and religious questions that ever disturbed and inspired any age were being freely discussed. The maiden was full of energy, and surcharged in every faculty of body and of soul with the love of liberty — an inheri- THE BOMANCE BEGINS. 49 tance from her Holland mother. It was with difficulty, indeed, that she was able to maintain her proper place in English society, since her decidedly liberal ideas, which she made no ef- fort to disguise or conceal, were the scandal of her times. She obtained her education in the times of Elizabeth, a period in which the in- creased sense of individual power foimd its ex- pression in the new spirit which was already beginning definitely to distinguish England from other nations. And yet this maiden, by virtue of her father's position, and with true feminine self-contradictoriness, was an intense Royalist and a Cavalier of the most aristocratic station. She was an ardent supporter of the claims of the Established Church and a staunch champion of the rights of the crown. But the ideas in- herited from her Holland mother were destined to have their moulding influences in her after life, particularly that part of it which was re- lated to the founding of her new home in the New World. She was not the only maiden who had felt the strange contradiction between the position thrust upon her by the accident of birth and the great convictions which were to make or mar her whole life, and the lives of unborn mil- lions. She faced the tremendous responsibility without flinching, and determined her course according to the Will of Heaven. so A FAMILY QUAEBEL. Just at this point the inevitable young man ap- pears. How he always manages to be on the ground at the crisal hour no philosophy of man has ever yet determined, but he is there, just the same. In this ease it happened to be a strapping young Englishman, in whose veins flowed the ancient blood of the best of the Saxons reinforced and vitalized by the choicest extract of all the bloods hereinbefore mentioned. He was a young man of decidedly revolutionary ideas as to both church and civil affairs. In body and in spirit he was the inevitable outcome of the ages of struggle that conspired to produce him. He was not something that happened in the world; he seemed to have been born when the world was born and to have grown up with it. He had' the great good fortune to meet and fall in love with this maiden. His name was Civil Liberty. It was a pure case of "love at first sight," and unlike most such sudden passions, it was destined to deepen and strengthen with the centuries, sur- viving all civil and social upheavals, and all shocks of Revolution and Rebellion, and to cul- minate ultimately in a shining and perpetual example to the whole world of a Union con- ceived in liberty and dedicated to the rights of mankind and cemented forever by the blessing of "the God who made man free." SCHOOL DAYS. A Post Graduate Course "What Will Our Parents SayT' Two Famous School Teachers "God's Silly Vassal '^ A Fatal Blunder Back to Holland "Intended for Each Other'' A Great Inspiration SCHOOL DAYS. 53 ^TT These young people met at that most plas- flll tic period — the school life. They each ^1 1 took a post-graduate course at the same school, and had for their teachers the two great- est teachers then in the world. John Knox, whose prayers and sermons shook the thrones of kings and queens, had been himself a diligent student of John Calvin, whose revolutionaiy theology, and whose theories of civil govern- ment, and of the rights of the people as against the alleged divine rights of the king, were making all Christendom tremble in alarm. The very foundations of civil and social order were being threatened by these two audacious teach- ers. Both of these young people had been ab- sorbent listeners at their feet. 'Twas here they first looked into each other's eyes, and into each other's hearts, and life could never again be the same for either. Her warm Holland blood set her heart all aflutter and her cheeks all aflame; while his cooler and more deliberate Pil- grim blood, though held in hard restraint, never- theless raced like wine through his veins, while stammering speech only confused the eternal thing he longed to say. It was the greatest hour in human history since the dawn of the Christian Era. To their confused "What will our parents say to this?" good John Knox had the audacity 54 A FAMILY QUAEBEL. to assure them that it would be all right in the end, for in affairs of the heart, and as affecting the matter of personal choice, young people have some rights to think and act for themselves. After all, the world's great teachers have con- stituted its true nobility. Their story is the story of humanity's progress. Than these two, Calvin and Knox, few more richly repay the closest study. This is particularly true as regards the relation of their teachings to the new order that was to be established in this !N"ew Home soon to be established in the New World. John Calvin, the French teacher of Geneva, had from a deep study of the Bible, derived a special system of doctrine and discipline. The heart of his doctrine was: "Let a man believe with all his heart the absolute sovereignty of God, let him believe that his first and last allegiance is to God as sovereign, and he will know no such thing as fear of the face of man, be he king or potentate or peasant." That was the substance of his teaching. That teaching he wrote into Swiss Protestantism, into French Huguenotism, into English Puritanism, and into New England Pilgrimism. Buckle saj^s, "wherever that doc- trine has gone in France, Britain, Switzerland, America, the Calvinist faith has shown itself the unfailing friend of Constitutional Liberty." SCHOOL DAYS. 55 d' Aubigne says, ''Calvin was the founder of the greatest of the Eepublics: the oppressed who went to America were the sons of his faith." Motley tells us that, "Holland, England and America owe their liberties to the Calvinists." It was at the feet of Calvin John Knox sat, and having mastered his lesson, he took it home and set it to service to work out the reformation of Scotland. He drove out the Eoman hierarchy the natural enemy of republicanism — and gave Scotland a free church and a free state, and taught the people how to learn their rights, as citizens, from the Bible. He showed them how to find, in the Bible, those modern American doctrines, the principle of representation and the right of choice. He gave the people schools and education, and molded the men who were to shape the New World. Knox worked always from within the church, believing that to build a free church was to build a free people. Carlyle says of him, "He resur- rected Scotland from the dead and gave it lit- erature and thought and industry. Watt and Hume and Scott and Burns— without the Ref- ormation these could not have been." But Car- lyle was himself a Scotchman. One who is not a Scotchmen says of them, "In proportion to their small numbers, they are the most distin- 56 A FAMILY QUABREL. guished little people since the days of the Athe- nians, and the best educated of the modern races." All the industrial arts may be found in Glasgow, and all the fine arts in Edinburgh, and as for their literature, it is everywhere. We shall have more to say of the Scotch people later on. Now note carefully a series of most interesting events. On the death of Elizabeth in 1603 James I came to the throne of England. History compels the estimate: he was a fool. Under his wholly ri- diculous exterior, however, lay concealed a man of considerable ability in natural shrewdness, scholarship, and mother-wit; but he was a cow- ard with a big head, a slobbering tongue, rickety legs, lack of dignit}-, coarseness of speech, buf- foonery and pedantry. A prominent Puritan minister once publicly plucked his sleeve and addressed him as "God's silly vassal." James never forgot the insult nor did he ever forgive the Puritans for offering it. The Young Englishman, Civil Liberty, had imbibed from his great teachers, Calvin and Knox, the then novel and wholly revolutionary doctrine, that in affairs of the heart, and as touching individual life-choices, young people have some rights to think and act for them- SCHOOL DAYS. ^7 selves. To the defense of this idea and to its everlasting promulgation he now felt called by all the devotion he felt for the fair maid, and to the gigantic task he set himself with all possible zeal, greatly encouraged and strengthened by the admiration and devotion of this maiden of his heart's desire, Federal Union. It must be said right here that, notwithstanding their wide dif- ferences in political and religious belief, as well as in social position, they loved each other de- votedly, and realized fully that only in IJnion could their passion for Liberty be satisfied and exemplified before the world. As in most such affairs, their differences were on the surface, at heart they were already one. King James, with characteristic blundering, failed to note and reckon with the forces which were working for political and religious freedom among the people of his land. He haughtily de- clared that he would have no sentimental non- sense about his court. He said: "I will have no liberty as to ceremonies; I will have one doc- trine, one discipline, one religion, in substance and ceremony." If these young upstarts did not like that procedure they might make the best of it! The inevitable happened — as indeed it is likely to — in spite of love and deathless devotion. 58 A FAMILY QUARBEIL. Given the choice between imprisonment and exile, they sensibly chose the latter, and, accompanied by their pastor and practically the entire church, they went on a prolonged visit to some mutual friends, relatives of Federal Union, in Holland. The young man carried with him introductory- letters which gave both himself and his beloved immediate entrance into the very best homes in Holland and to the most loyal and lasting fel- lowships they had ever known in their lives, or ever were to know. This visit, as we shall have occasion to notice later, was to have a larger influence on both their lives, as w^ell as upon the shaping of the foundations of the new home in the New World, than either of them at the time even dreamed. A Power, mightier than themselves, had gripped the sit- uation and was shaping events and generating forces toward a great consummation. In Ley- den, "the heart of Holland," seat of the great university of the name, they met many famous people, and were surrounded with an atmosphere highly stimulating alike to their mutual devo- tion and to the great passion for Liberty and Union which was the very breath of their life. They were not lonely, and the Pilgrim community prospered well, many buying their own homes, having their own place of worship, and while SCHOOL DATS. 69 they did not hold their goods in common, they did enter into a sacred covenant with each other to bear each other's burdens. In their church life the unity of the spirit was preserred in the bonds of peace. The Pilgrim congregation was as "cosmopolitan as Christianity itself.'' Mem- bers of the Reformed churches of England, Scot- land, France and the Netherlands were received into communion. The bond of union in the church was not "a creed in a form of words, but a covenant of mutual love and service, and of loyalty to the Divine Master." They kept their eyes open and learned many things which were destined to be of great service to them later. Robinson, their devoted pastor, "was very confident that the Lord had more truth and light to break forth out of his holy Word." Both Civil Liberty and Federal Union, it will be perceived, had deeply imbibed that doctrine so peculiarly attractive to all young people at this stage in their social history, namely, that they were from all eternity intended for each other. Only in Union could they realize their sublime passion and destiny. Subsequent events have abundantly justified that faith, for it was to them, not a mere sentiment, but a mighty faith. Love was trusted to find a way, and Love, given a free hand, seldom disappoints such a trust, certainly did not disappoint in this case. S9 A FAMILY QUASBEL. Even in Holland they were not free from the tyrannous persecutions of James Stuart, of Eng- land. Some of the Pilgrims had the temerity to publish and circulate some pamphlets contain- ing doctrines highly offensive to the somewhat sensitive political tastes of the King; whereupon he set all the resources of his government at work to ferret out and punish the offenders. In some small measure he succeeded, but you can- not exterminate ideas in that way. The mis- guided efforts of the King in this matter simply drove the advocates of these doctrines to more strenuous and determined endeavors. The per- secution only served to advertise and spread the "offensive notions" more widely. One day, while musing on these and other stir- ring matters, a great inspiration came to our hero. Was it an inspiration from Heaven, or was it a mere adventurous notion? He at once consulted his Beloved in the matter, and they debated the whole question with great serious- ness, all the while planning practical ways for carrying it into execution. It was a somewhat unconventional proceedure they proposed; but after the most careful consideration, they de- cided to cast the die and stake their all upon the throw. In the meanwhile some interesting events have been happening in the Old Home. SOME CORRELATED EVENTS. A Ship Load of Old Bachelors A Hopeless Enterprise A Ship Load of Fair Maidens Some Match-Making Wedding Fees Gloomy Prospects Better Than Was Expected SOME COESELATED EVENTS. f Near the time when our young friends left England for Holland, some other ^_ folks had also left. On the twentieth day "of December, 1606, three ships carry- ing a cargo of about a hundred men dropped down the Thames and were blown to their destination by contrary winds over rough seas, and by a fortunate blunder, "happily condoned by Heaven's pity," landed at Jamestown in April of the following year. This cargo was composed of "gentlemen, gold-refiners, car- penters, jewelers, laborers, and one perfumer." Eather a nondescript crowd; ten times better fitted to spoil a commonwealth than either to begin one or help to maintain one. Neither were they of a class best calculated to fight the rigors of the winter in the wilderness. Their leaders were worthless and indolent — the gold-seekers were disappointed, and to cap the climax of mis- fortune, they had selected a swamp for a dwell- ing-place. Hardships almost unimaginable fol- lowed. Captain John Smith was the only mas- terful man among them. So desperate were their straits that the whole colony would most prob- ably have perished of starvation but for the kindly offices of a dusky Indian Princess, Poca- hontas, and her faithful maidens. Since the sur- est and shortest way to a man's heart is through 64 A FAMILY QUAEREL. his stomach, it is not remarkahle that the kind- hearted Indian Protectress won the lasting de- votion of the adventurous settlers and became the Patron Saint of the colony. Some, however, think there is a deeper reason than mere physical hardships for the unfortunate history of this Jamestown enterprise so long trembling on the brink of utter extinction. Some allege that the chief trouble was that they were all bachelors. A colony of bachelors has never been known to do anything worth while, or to have made a success of any enterprise. At least history has never thought worth while to record anything they ever did for the good of the world. Very early in the history of the human race the bachelor was pronounced a failure, God hastening to create a wife for him. It is about all society can do to get along with a few of them — and the fewer the better — scattered sparsely through it. This somewhat precarious settlement was the first permanent English settlement in the New World. Eealizing the original mistake in trying to do anything worth while by a lot of old bachelors, about twelve years later another ship bearing about a hundred women, among them some of England's fairest maidens, landed at Jamestown. Both historians and novelists have tried, but all SOME COBBELATED EVENTS. 65 in vain, to describe that situation. Each of these women had come across the sea with the avowed purpose of entering matrimony and setting up homes in the colony. Within twenty-four hours after the landing every one of the women was married, and the parson's purse was bulging with a snug fortune, while his barn was packed with enough tobacco — the only coin in which some could pay the wedding fee — to supply him for the remainder of his life, and of many gener- ations following. From that day the colony pros- pered, as was to be expected. The enterprise proved such a pronounced success, and the letters home, written by the happy brides, were so en- thusiastic that another ship containing about sixty women was sent out, and favoring winds brought it also into the desired haven. These men and maidens, and the thousands more who came after Cromwell beheaded Charles I., were Cavaliers and intense Royalists. So intense were their Royalist sympathies that Gov- ernor Berkeley, while he was governor of the colony, secured legislation that treated as traitors all who in any way justified the King's death. Under the direction of this same Governor, Richard Lee, a rich planter, visited Charles II. in his exile and offered him Virginia as a king- dom if he would but come and accept it. The 66 A FAMILY QUABBEL. offer was not accepted, but the King never for- got the kindness of the proffer and on the day of his coronation in England, he robed himself in Virginia silk. There would seem to be little hope for the Young Republic among people with such views and antecedents. Yet it was the lineal descen- dants of these same Cromwell-hating Cavaliers, and bitter Royalists, who gave to America many of the men and of the measures which made Amer- ican liberties popular and effective. It was a direct descendant of the same Colonel Lee who offered Virginia as a Kingdom to Charles II., who wrote the famous Address To The Colonies, and in the Continental Congress moved the Declaration of Independence in the immortal "RESOLVED, That these Colonies are and ought to be free and independent States, that all political connec- tion between them and the State of Great Britain is, and of right ought to be, totally dis- solved. ' ' The Virginia Colony was patterned after the superb baronial establishments of the Mother Country, having as the highest type of citizens a cheap and crude imitation of the English ter- ritorial lord. This ambition toward landed pro- prietorship was greatly stimulated by the ease with which great tracts of land could be ob- SOME COBBEXATED EVENTS. 67 tained. But this colony in after years was sub- ject to such a change of heart and manners as made her one of the richest and most self-sacrific- ing contributors toward setting up in the New World the New Home for Liberty. That "Old Dominion/' settled by rank Eoyal- ists and aristocratic, ease-loving Cavaliers, uttered the first public voice against tyranny of the Mother Land, and made the first organized move for political National Independence. She also gave the first, and the only, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, furnished the father of the Constitution of the United States, as well as the president of the Constitutional Convention, the first President of the United States, and the first Chief Justice of the Nation. The Virginia Colony did much to make effective the measures which gave Federal unity and coherence to the young Nation. It was a Virginian who prepared the bans which proclaimed the approaching mar- riage of our young friends. Good soil it must have been to grow such products. «A MANUFACTURED COUNTRY'* A Place of Refuge What Was The '' Vision T' An Historic Voyage The Mayflower Contract A '*Weak Thing" Becomes Mighty Some Old College Friends Busy Toilers and Patient Suffei^rs Inexcusable Intolerance Their First ** Lover's Quarrel" Temporary Separation Another New Enterprise Differing Opinions But Unshaken Loyalty Led In Strange Ways "a manufactubed country." 71 ^nTIn the meanwhile, what has become of our ^■11 young friends over in Holland? In Caes- ^1 1 ar's time Holland was a series of marshes verging on the Northern Sea. It was a land which nature seemed to have denied nearly all her gifts, so that disinherited at her birth, she stands forth a vast monument to the courage and indus- try of an indomitable people. On this little patch of "manufactured^' earth the boast of Archimedes had been fulfilled. By a matchless industry, that uninhabited, and apparently uninhabitable land had been converted from a waste into one of the most fertile gardens of Europe. Under the lead- ership of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, a man of splendid genius, of catholicity of spirit rarely equaled, and a breadth of view surpassed only by his breadth of patriotism, the Nether- lands, as the region was then called, had become free. Not only free, but at the time under con- sideration, had become the refuge for the per- secuted Pilgrims and Puritans of England, as well as of the Huguenots and all others seeking free- dom of conscience and faith. When our young English friends, Civil Liberty and Federal Union, entered Holland, they found a system of confederated states, a free common- wealth aHve with the mighty new spirit of enter- prise and commerce and letters and refinement. 72 A FAMILY QUARREL. These confederated states had built up and nur- tured free institutions for three hundred years, while the night of despotism lay thick and heavy on all the surrounding horizon. Here they re- mained about twelve years, drinking constantly at the pure fountains of freedom, making some very agreeable acquaintances among English Pilgrims, Puritans, and French refugees called Huguenots. These twelve years exerted a most salutary in- fluence upon the young couple, taking the bigotry out of them, teaching them lasting lessons in toleration and even Christian love for those who were sincere in faiths other than their own. We left them some pages back debating agitatedly over a great vision or dream that had come to the young man. ^Vhat was that vision? Somewhat hazy re- ports had been coming to them concerning the great New World "beyond the deep sea-wall." The vision was this: Where so good a place to build the future New Home as in the free and unoccupied New World? Yonder in the far dis- tance loomed the vast continental estate, to be had for the mere occupancy of it. Prom its dis- tant, misty shores strange influences seemed to draw. They impelled like the lure of heaven. The whole matter was freely and fully discussed by the community and the decision was reached. Ac- cordingly one hundred and two persons under the "a manufactubed country." 73 leadership of William Bradford, William Brewster and Miles Standish sailed in the historic May- flower for the New Home in the New World, land- ing at Plymouth Rock just in time to celebrate Christmas, 1630, after a stormy voyage of two months. Before landing the men in the com- pany drew up and signed the famous "May- flower Contract,'' by which they bound themselves to make and obey their own laws. The colony re- ceived the name of "The "Plymouth Plantation," and its founders are commonly known as "The Pil- grim Fathers." Let no uninformed person imagine that this somewhat hasty departure from Holland had in it anything of flippant thoughtlessness or of reckless adventure. It was accomplished in the spirit of devout reverence. It might be called an act of real worship. At Delft their minister and some close friends accompanied them to the boat. God's favor was fervently invoked on the voyage and on all who might enter the great wilderness to which these Pilgrims were bound. What a poor, weak thing that voyage seemed to be. But, as Carlyle tells us, "the weak thing be- came mighty because it was the true thing." "Pur- itanism was only despicable and laughable then; but nobody laughs at it now. It has weapons and sinews. It has armed navies and has cunning in 74 A FAMILY QUABBEL. its fingers, and strength in its right arm. It can steer ships and fell forests and remove mountains. It is one of the strongest things under the sun to- day. Give a thing time; if it can succeed it is a right thing.^^ Puritanism has had time and has succeeded. There were straggling settlers along the coast of America before — some materials for a body — ^the arrival of the Pilgrims and the Puri- tans put a soul into it. On their arrival, our young friends found some old, true friends, and in the years that followed they made some very congenial new ones. They found, scattered along the coast, many alumni of the old Calvin and Knox University from which they had both graduated with such distinguished honors. They found the Puritans on Massachu- setts Bay. The Hollanders, with characteristic enterprise, had bought the whole of Manhattan Island for the munificent sum of $24, probably all it was worth at that time. They found the Quakers in Pennsylvania, with some Hollanders in the western part of the state. The Covenanters and a large proportion of Huguenots in the Caro- linas and in all the other settlements. There was amid such associations and surroundings, neither the disposition nor the provocation to home-sick- ness or loneliness. They had each other and they had their love, and in spite of many physical "a manufactured country." 75 hardships they were happier than they had ever been before. For a long while the vigorous young English Pilgrim was about the busiest man on the con- tinent. He was building his churches and school houses and cabins. He was clearing the forests for the needed harvests. He was kept constantly on guard against the Indians, guiding his plow with one hand and clutching his ever needed musket with the other. The proverbial wolf had to be driven daily from the cabin door. Such was the suffering that during the first winter half the colony perished. At one time there were but six or seven persons able to be about. But to their everlasting praise let it be said, notwith- standing this terrible suffering, not one of them thought of returning to England or to Holland. They cheerfully accepted full responsibility for the irrevocable step they had taken and were ready to stand by the issue to the death, if need be. Although these Pilgrims and Puritans came to America to find civil and religious liberty, they refused to allow to others the rights they de- manded for themselves. Instead of allowing free- dom to all men, they passed severe laws against Episcopalians, Eoman Catholics and Quakers. They established a state church, and no one was 76 A FAMILY QUARBEL. allowed to vote in a civil election who did not belong to this church. Non-attendance at re- ligious service was punished by fine, imprison- ment or public whipping. **The result was that while public order was good and morality high, Massachusetts was the most intolerant colony in all America." There were some who thought, we think with good reason, that it was unjust to refuse a man participation in civil affairs because he was not a member of a certain church. Those who so thought moved into Connecticut and founded the towns of Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford. These three towns were later united in a mini- ature republic under a written constitution, which remained in force one hundred and eighty years. Connecticut thus became the first republic in the history of the world to be founded by a written constitution. The influence of this document upon the Constitution of the United States is not equaled by any other colonial instrument. Among those who founded Connecticut was the heroine of our story, Federal Union. She was, indeed, one of the prime movers in the "model enterprise." The first "lover's quarrel" was thus provoked. She had some very decided views on the questions involved, which views "a MAinJFACTUBED CX)UNTBY." 77 she was no way backward in defending. She stoutly resisted all her Lover's appeals, and reso- lutely cast in her fortunes with the Connecticut colony. Communication between distant neighbors was exceedingly difficult in those days because of lack of facilities for travel. So it happened that the young Pilgrim and his sweetheart saw each other only at long intervals. Their differences of opinion in matters of church and state made no difference whatever in their mutual devotion. She was a very proud, very haughty, but withal, a very beautiful and very true and loving and altogether- worth-while young woman. The sepa- ration strengthened rather than weakened the tie between them. The fires of devotion never went down in his heart. Each hardship suffered but lent a warmer pulse to his loyal heart, while it painted a redder flush upon her cheek and lent a quicker throb to her love. They were being led in strange ways, truly. But subsequent events have shown that no more important event occurred in their pre-nuptial history than this temporary separation. All the while affairs were shaping themselves back at the Old Home, as well as in the New, pre- paring the way for Union. While they are thus 78 A FAMILY QUABBEL. busy about many prosaic and incidental things, seeing little of each other, but loyal, both of them, to the heart's core, let us take a suryey of the great forces that for centuries have been working toward this very imminent consumma- tion. "TEUE MARRIAGES MADE IN HEAVEN" Some Mutual Friends The Movement Both Political and Moral The Reformers Before The Reformation ''The White Knisht'' ''The Luther of Italy'' "The Modern Athens'' A Popular Preacher A Great Explorer "New Bottles For New Wine" "true marriages made in heaven." 81 ^TT It has passed into a proverb that true mar- ^■ll riages are made in Heaven. The popular ^1 1 intei-pretation of this oft-quoted saying is supposed to be that some higher power shapes circumstances and events so as to bring into con- junction just at the proper time just the proper persons, and in a way to promote best a happy consummation. Let us examine now to what ex- tent this is true of the ease under consideration. Was this conjunction of Civil Liberty and Fed- eral Union in the New World a mere affair of chance, or did some higher power so direct events as to make it inevitable? Was it a mere acci- dent that while Savonarola was in his pulpit in Florence, outlining the plan of the Christian Commonwealth, whose Sovereign was God and whose one law was His Word; Columbus should be pushing the prow of his ship out through un- charted and unknown seas in search of a New Continent upon which this New Commonwealth might be securely established? The effort to an- swer this question will bring us face to face with a double series of connected facts which look more like the well laid plot of a masterpiece of fiction than like actual, prosaic history. Let us examine for a while the historical sequence of these facts. The great Riritan Movement was as much a 6 S2 A FAMILY QUABBEL. political as it was a religious, or moral, move- ment. It is with two sets of facts, political and intellectual, and moral and religious, which we have to do here. If we are deeply indebted to the men who made the Reformation a fact, we are no less indebted to the Reformers before the Reformation, the men but for whose labors the Reformation might not have been possible. It is no exaggeration to say that among the pioneers who prepared the way for the Reformation, John Wyclif stands lofty and alone. N'o greater name in the list of English reformers has appeared. His task was to sow the seeds both in England and in Ger- many which ripened into the Reformation harvest. He has been characterized aptly as "The Morn- ing Star" of the Reformation, antedating the so-called Protestant Reformation by about one hundred and fifty years. While Wyclif was writ- ing at Oxford, his books were being read in Bohemia as well as in England. Huss and Je- rome of Prague, both of whom wore the crown of martyrdom, were Wyclif's successors. Out of WycliFs movement arose the Lollard insurrection in England and the Hussite wars in Bohemia. For neither of these outbreaks, however, did Wyclif deserve the responsibility which most his- torians place upon him. The movement was "TBUE marriages made in HEAVEN". o6 carried into Bohemia by the interchange of stu- dents between Oxford and The University of Prague. The one lasting monument to Wyclif, the "White Knight of the Keformation," is his first English translation of the entire Bible. Af- ter his death his writings were condemned by the council of Constance, 1415, and a decree issued ordering that all his books, and his body, should be publicly burned. Thirteen years after the passage of the decree it was peremptorily ordered to be carried out by the Pope, the Bishop of Lincoln, once a loyal follower of Wyclif, being appointed the instrument for its execution. The ashes of books and body were collected and cast into the river Swift, a tributary to the Avon. But they could not bum nor drown the ideas which the brave, but premature, Eeformer had let loose throughout civilized Europe ; hence the prophecy : "The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea; And far as ocean throws her waves On lands of chapels and of graves Shall Wyclif s doctrine be." To which may be added Wordsworth's charac- terization : 84 A FAMILY QUABREL. "This deed accursed. An emblem yields to friends and enemies, How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed." Three quarters of a century after the burning of Wyclif's body and books before his church at Lutterworth, some students from Oxford went to Italy to continue and complete their studies in the Greek and Latin classics. Florence was at that time the headquarters of the Rennais- sance. Here Savonarola was in the full flush of his fame and power. He has been called "The Luther of Italy.'' He was a man so pure of life, so honest and brave and independent, so eloquent in speech and so profound in scholar- ship, that he seemed gifted with more than mortal authority in his utterances. It was as though one of the old Hebrew prophets had risen from the dead and appeared with fresh authority from the King of the Heavens. Florence was one of the richest, perhaps the richest city in Southern Europe. It was filled with books, poets, painters, scholars, and was perhaps the most intellectual city in Southern Europe. It was certainly one of the most wicked cities of all Europe. With the decline of the Florentine Re- "tbue mabriages made in heaven." 85 public had come troublous times; and there had come into power certain prominent wealthy fam- ilies who assumed the not altogether benevolent authority of dictators. Among these was the Medici family. The city of Florence became "the Modem Athens.^^ While Lorenzo de Medici was dictator, he heard of the fame of this priest and invited him to Florence, where in due time he became prior of San Marco. There had been reformers before, but this was a different kind of a reformer. Savonarola was a religious reformer — a sort of Elijah and John Baptist combined. * * He came like a shell in the midst of tinder, and it burst in the midst of the Platonic Academy." His popularity was astounding. He drew all classes, the rich and the cultured and the poor and the uncultured. The people of thought and fashion attended his ministry. The city was shaken as with earthquake throes. The church could not hold his audiences and he had to go out into the open. Shops and stores were closed and all business was suspended at the hour of his preaching. Having learned for himself from the Scriptures the great need of reform within the Church and the State, he insisted on others study- ing the Scriptures as containing all good. He denounced unsparingly all crime and injustice from King to Pope. He cried aloud and spared 86 A FAMILY QUABBEL. not. He was particularly severe against the of- fenses of the leaders in the Church, the Pope, the cardinals, the priests and the monks, and the petty tyrannies of the princes, calling loudly for repentance and reformation. Of course the Pope disliked his plain speech, and sent him word to be more discreet in his public utterances, to which the great preacher replied: "Tell the Pope, in my name, to repent of his sins, for calamities from on high are im- pending over him and his family." He was sum- moned to Rome, but the people would not allow him to go. The Pope tried to bribe him with the red hat of a cardinal, but he utterly re- fused the office, saying, "Red hat! I wish no other red hat than that of martyrdom, reddened with my own blood." He took an aggressive part in political affairs and endeavored to build up a Christian Common- wealth, with God as Sovereign and God's Word as the only law. His greatest biographer says of him: "Columbus opened the paths of the ocean; Sa- vonarola began to open those of the spirit. While one was ascending the pulpit, the other was dashing his bold prow through the waters of an unknown sea. Both believed themselves sent of God to spread Christianity over the earth; "tbue mabbiages made in heaten." 87 both had strange visions, which aroused each to his own task; both alike laid a hand upon a New World, each alike unconscious of its im- portance and immensity.'^ While Savonarola was laying his plans of Chris- tian Empire, Columbus was searching for a world where it might be erected and maintained. SOME OXFORD STUDENTS. Three Great Beginnings A Dishonest Guardian An Epoch-making Translation Something Happens In Germany Intellectual Sources Of The Movement **The People's Time Is Coming" A Series Op Revolutions Not a Mere By-product SOME OXFORD STUDENTS. 91 ^fTT It is not to be wondered at that those ^^1 1 English students referred to in the fore- ^1 1 going chapter, returned to Oxford greatly stirred by what they had learned in Italy. One of the students, Linaere, while in Florence, be- came a tutor or fellow student, in the home of Lorenzo de Medici, father of Leo X. Another of these students went to Italy after Lorenzo 's death, and while Savonarola was practically at the head of the Florentine Republic, and while the scan- dals of the worst of all Rome's popes, Alexander VI., were in everybody's mouth. This student, John Colet, caught the spirit, not only of the revival of learning, but of religious reform as well, and on his return to Oxford started the movement that was to influence Europe mightily. He made many disciples and did much to pro- mote that religion which consists in love to God, and to one's neighbor and which gives men a new motive and ruling power in life. Sir Thomas More became his devoted fellow-worker. Just about this time a boy, who was heir to a little stock of money, was thrown into a mon- astery by his dishonest guardian who was anxious to get the boy's money. But when the boy be- came of age he rebelled, left the monastery, earned his living by giving lessons to private pupils, and worked his way up to such learning 92 A FAMILY QUABBEI.. as the university of Paris could give him. He was too poor to go to Italy, and came to Ox- ford by invitation of an English nobleman. His health was ruined by the privations and hardships he had suffered, but his mental energy rose su- perior to his bodily infirmities and, arriving at Oxford, Erasmus fell in with the little company of students afore-named. These three friends were scattered temporarily, but we shall hear much of them in the stirring times just at hand. Erasmus started for Italy, but was robbed on the way and had to stop in France. Colet re- mained at Oxford. More ultimately entered par- liament. Erasmus wrote his immortal "Praise of Folly," the bold satire of which did much to open the eyes of men everywhere to the need of reform, and turned the ridicule of the world upon the pretentions of the scholastic theologians and monks. Colet became dean of St. Paul's and removed to London; and More was forced into retirement because he dared to denounce in parliament an exorbitant subsidy demanded by the King. More wrote his "Utopia" to describe the ideal commonwealth. The keynote of the work was that government exists for the common good of the whole people and not the whole people for the good of a few. SOME OXFORD STUDENTS. 93 Erasmus, meanwhile, was hard at work on a book which did more to prepare the way for the religious reformation than any other book pub- lished during this era. It was his edition of the New Testament, containing, in two columns side by side the original Greek and a new Latin trans- lation of his own. It was published in 1516. The *^living picture" of Christ and His Apostles contained in the New Testament was here pre- sented in all the freshness of the original lan- guage and a new translation. This work pre- pared the way for bringing the New Testament within reach of the people as well as of the clergy. It was the first step toward putting the Scriptures into the so-called "vulgar tongue" of each country. In Germany something else was happening. Of Saxon ancestry of the peasant class, Martin Luther, the greatest of the great Reformers, was born in Thuringia just nine years before America was discovered. His parents were poor, but they determined to prepare him for the law and so sent him to the university at Erfurt where later he took his degree. After gradua- tion, contrary to his parents' wishes, he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt where, after great wrestlings of spirit, his soul found peace in accepting the doctrine of "justification by 94 A FAMILY QUABBEL. faith." He accepted the whole Augnstinian sys- tem of theology, which was a part of the very Oxford scholastic theology from which the afore- named Oxford students were trying to set men free. It was while preaching and teaching the Augns- tinian theology at Wittenburg that Luther first saw and read Erasmus' new edition of the New Testament in Greek and Latin in parallel col- umns. Luther eagerly perused its pages rejoic- ing in the new light which it shed on many old familiar passages. But he was deeply pained to observe the difference between his own teaching and that of Erasmus, because Erasmus did not accept the Augustinian doctrines in toto. The scandal of the ^^sale of indulgences" was making Luther's blood boil. It had proceeded to the point where "every sin had its price." Leo X wanted money to help his nephew in a war he had on hand. To get this money he offered to grant indulgences, or pardons, at a certain price to those who w^ould contribute money to the build- ing of St. Peter's at Eome. The Princes, how- ever, were growing jealous of the diversion of their subjects' mone}^ to Rome. But the Pope overcame their objections by giving them a share of the spoil. Kings and Princes had made them- selves poor by their frequent wars, and a share SOME OXFORD STUDENTS. 95 in the papal spoils of their own subjects was too great a temptation to be lightly set aside. Indulgences were granted those able to pay for them — and as for the dead, as soon as the money chinked in the money-box the souls of the dead friends were immediately released from purgatory. This was Tetzel's doctrine. Luther protested with all vigor against it, nailing his famous ninety-five theses against the door of the palace church and reading them the following Sunday — All-Saints Day — in the great parish church to all the people. With the years of controversy following we are not here concerned. But was it not more than a coincidence that at three different points, Italy England, and Germany — this greatest of all mod- ern movements was simultaneously begun? All the evidence of history points to a Supervising Will, shaping all the widely divergent elements, and even the opposing forces, toward a common end. So much then for the moral and religious set of converging events. Let us now attend to an- other series of equally interesting and co-ordinat- ing facts bearing on the civil or political move- ment toward the same end. The intellectual beginnings of the Reforma- tion may be said to date from the Crusades of the Christian nations. The original purpose of 96 A FAMILY QUABBEL. these Crusades was to eject the "Infidel" from Jerusalem. In this they failed. But they awak- ened Europe to new ideas and new life. They brought the East and the West nearer together; and the Knights and Kings and soldiers who returned from the new lands into which they had gone, brought new thoughts and wider no- tions. Commerce was extended, invention was stimulated, and everything was done on a wider scale. The recent conquests of the Turks indi- rectly stimulated the cause of Christendom with new life. With the fall of Constantinople began the revival of learning in Europe. Learned Jews and Greeks settled in Italy and the ancient literatures of Greece and Eome were revived. A succession of poets, sculptors, paint- ers and historians, such as had not been known for centuries, arose. The invention of gun- powder gave war a wider scope. The invention of printing gave to literature the spread of new ideas with a rapidity hitherto undreamed. The mar- iner's compass extended immeasurably the mastery of the seas and thus promoted commerce with distant nations. A new way was being prepared for the advance of civilization. This is most im- portant — ^not merely an advance in wealth and luxury and population and military prowess on land and sea, but a vastly better, and hitherto a SOME OXFOBD STTJDENTS. 97 largely unheard of way — a way of living together peacefully in civil society. The old civilization which had been established and perpetuated by conquest through force, was to be replaced by the new civilization which was to have as its aim the common good of all the people. The old order stood for the government of the many for the good of a few; the new order was for the self-government by all the people for the good of all. Of course this ideal was slow of realization just because it is so great. Not all in a day is it to be accomplished. After seven hundred years the struggle is still on. But it is encouraging to note the progress made to- ward the better, and that the progress is an ac- celerating progress. Europe has passed, within a century, from the absolutism which denied ut- terly the sovereignty of the people, to mixed democracies which allow a good degree of parti- cipation of the people in the aifairs of the State. If in a single century a whole continent has advanced from pure monarchy to mixed de- mocracy, is it too much to hope that within the next century it shall pass from mixed to pure democracy ? A series of revolutions, linked together as though planned by a single mind, and wrought out by a single hand, explains this gradual eman- 7 98 A FAMILY QUABBEL. cipation, which has had to depose both, feuda- lism and monarchy, in order to found over their portentous debris the perfect fullness of its rights. Each great cycle of history traversed by civilization has emancipated some human faculty or power. Herein lies the philosophy of the progress of civilization. The discoveries of the pilots and navigators in Asia and America emancipated nature and furnished new soil for the sowing of new ideas. As exploration widened the horizon, so the Rennaissance gave new life to the sensibilities and the imagination. The Protestant Eeformation in turn emancipated man's moral faculties, especially the conscience. Following the emancipation of the conscience, which converted every soul into a temple of the Most High, came the triumph of philosophy, banishing scholastic formula and unshackling the reason, of all man's faculties ever the greatest. With sensibilities, conscience, reason, and other faculties emancipated, one more faculty remains to be set free in order to complete and realize all the rest and give them potency of action — the will. To accomplish this great freedom of the will of the people all Christendom has been over- whelmed with revolutions. Many of these have failed, but enough have succeeded to create that one essential organ of democracy — a popular will. SOME OXFORD STUDENTS. 99 The first of these successful modern revolu- tions was the Dutch, which expelled the remnants of the Burgundian dynasty from their narrow but wonderful little district. The second was the British which overthrew the Stuarts and laid a strong foundation for parliamentary regimen in Europe. The third was the great American Rev- olution which startled the Old World with the spectacle of the trilogy of personal liberty, a pacific democracy, and a stable republic. The last and most dreadful of all these, the one which condensed all the progressive ideas of all the pre- ceding revolutions into one, and which did more than any of the other three to popularize and propagate democracy in Europe, was the French Revolution. Reactions have followed as a matter of course. Three in particular are worthy of note — The Brumaire, or first Napoleonic, the reaction of the Holy Alliance, and that of 1850. Bonaparte's ef- fort to destroy the republic only revived the revo- lution of Mirabeau and of Robespiere, and Bona- parte carried on the points of his bayonets throughout Europe the very ideas which he sought to destroy. The constitutions of Ger- many, Spain, Italy and Portugal grew out of that reaction. In 1815 the Holy Alliance sought to seal the sepulchre of the people, and set up 100 A FAMILY QUABREL. the dominion of a despot; but within five years the supposed corpse had burst from his tomb, disconcerted the Bourbon reaction in France and furthered the development of democracy through- out Europe. France was emancipated anew and Belgium was added to the list of free states. The premature democratic revolution in 1848 was frosted by th^ Napoleonic reaction in 1850, but in ten years it sprung up afresh in Italy. With the fall of Napoleon III., in 1870, Italian Na- tionality was consummated under Victor Emanuel and a better day dawned on a country endeared to Christendom for its glorious past and its classic associations. All over a new Europe the fresh winds of hope are blowing. That breeze which sprung up on the banks of the Seine whisked from the heads of European kings their crowns of divine rights. It blew clear across the Atlan- tic and scattered the American republics over an entire continent. The temporal power of the Pope is forever gone. Caesar's prestige is for- ever destroyed, while the freedom of the people grows and strengthens. America is blazing the way with no uncertain lead. Europe is following after as fast as her decrepit and archaic institu- tions will permit her, and soon the nations of the w^hole world Avill be treading the royal pathway of the people. As Gerald Massey sings, "The People's time is coming." SOME OXFORD STUDENTS. 101 "Aye it must come! The tyrant's throne is crumbling. Room, for the men of mind make way. Ye cannot stay the opening day! The world rolls on, the light grows stronger! The people's time is coming. This phase of the subject has been dwelt upon at such length in order to show that the growth and union of these two great principles was not accidental — not a mere by-product of national progress — but that it was a vital part of the original order for the culture of the nations. It was an indispensable stage in the march of civ- ilization toward that "one, far-off, divine event toward which the whole creation moves.'^ If the facts stated mean anything at all they mean that for centuries before Civil Liberty and Federal Union were brought together here in the Ameri- can Republic, some higher than mere human power and ingenuity was at work preparing races and nations, their ideas and institutions, to be- come the suitable exponents of the new ideas which were to J&nd their highest and purest em- bodiment in the New American-Saxon Home in the New World. But we must get back to our story. BACK TO THE STOEY. Love as a Sentiment and as a Principle An Interlude A Great Socl\l Function Tea Made by a New Process Engased The Bans Published BACK TO THE STOBY. 105 ^vi I It was indeed an auspicious day when our ^J I friend, Civil Liberty, sat as a learner at ^1 1 the feet of the great Knox. No small part of the lesson he there learned was a deeper and more intelligent love for the fair maid who had already won his heart. Here he learned the wide difference between love as a mere sentiment, — a surface feeling with pleasing emotions — and love as an eternal principle taking hold of the deepest sources of his life with the very power of God. Under the inspiration of this master passion his cause, the noblest of causes, became like a beacon set in heaven, and yet attainable from the earth. The soul of the cause here entered into the soul of the man, becoming an intensely vital thing, and challenging every power of his life, and rein- forcing him with the power and the blessing of Almighty God. "Reality," says Carlyle, "is of God's making." Here the substantial reality of the great fact he was living for transported him. Because his cause was a true one it must and would prosper, and all the world could not put it down. He at once attained the dignity that is inseparable from the man who is possessed and transfigured by the glory of a great conviction. Reference has been made already to the passage across the Atlantic to the 'New World which is the estate upon which their New Home is to be built, 106 A FAMILY QUABBEL. and also to the privations suffered and the limited opportunities to share each other's companion- ship. But now rumors are afloat of a great social function to be held soon in Boston. To this party both of our friends have been invited. It is to be a momentous affair and extensive prepara- tions have been made for it and great expecta- tions are indulged as to its outcome. Many dis- tinguished persons had a hand in the preparations and were present to see that everything went off according to arrangements, since great issues de- pended upon the proper conduct of the affair. The elite of fashionable Boston were out in full force. Among the most distinguished guests whose names were on the immortal "guest-book** were those of Paul Eevere, John Hancock, Dr. Warren, Josiah Quincy, John Adams and many others of equal distinction. The tea was made aft^r a new process which had been suggested by a prominent Boston mer- chant. He innocently asked, '^'Did any one ever think how tea would taste if mixed ^vith salt water?" The suggestion was all that was needed. Boston has always been ready for anything new. Enough tea was "mixed" that night with salt water to give the world a cup. The tea so prepared proved highly salubrious, particularly to our young friends. With its salt tang racing through BACK TO THE STORY. 107 their veins this couple gave themselves each to the other in utter abandonment of love and de- votion. Here they plighted their troth, and from this "Boston Tea Party" they returned "en- gaged." It was the glorious consummation of a great movement that had been mounting toward a climax for twelve centuries. John Adams said of it: "It must have so important consequences and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it an epoch in history." This betrothal was soon announced to the world in The Declaration of Independence. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. An Audacious PROCEEDiNe Troublesome Tears Opposition of the Old Folks Wedding Bells Wedding Guests A Very Modest Wedding Some Household Furniture THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. Ill ^TV A proverb oft quoted, says, the course of ^1 1 1 true love never runs smooth. True to this ^1 1 precept, they found obstacles in abun- dance. Every possible hinderance was placed in their way. Policy after policy calculated to alienate them from the Old Home and from each other, was launched against them, until the petty tyranny became simply unendurable. The Old Folks objected to the Union chiefly on the ground that, when the young folks married, they proposed to do what, under ordinary conditions young people ought to do, * ' set up housekeeping for themselves,'' and that too, on a new, and as they conceived, a vastly improved plan. It was a sublimely audacious proceeding. The republics of antiquity furnished them with few landmarks to guide their footsteps in the new and somewhat perilous adventure. Prophecies of failure were as confidently uttered as one might repeat the alphabet. But, as is usual in such cases, all warning and argument were in vain, and noth- ing remained but the exercise of physical force to prevent the consummation of this "American Folly," as it was usually called on the Continent. A whole army was launched against the enterprise from the Old Homestead — an indiscreet proced- ure, for such is the temper of human nature under such conditions that, in this very armed 112 A FAMILY QUABBEL. opposition you may read the sure prophecy of the coming wedding. Let a woman have hut the most ordinary respect for a young man, stir up a little wholesome opposition by the Old Folks, and she will marry him out of pure spite. Such is the glory of feminine human nature! Then followed a seven-years' struggle against Old World tyranny. It was the untried energies of youth, impelled by the imponderable forces of freedom, against an old and powerful king- dom bent on enforcing a wrong. But their youth- ful spirits ever rose elastic under every mountain of difficulty heaped upon them, and in every emer- gency freedom had some new sacrifice to offer. Shutting our ears for a moment to the roar of cannon and the clash of swords, let us attend to a matter to which few historians have given sufficient attention. Only the bare fact can be stated, elaboration is impossible here. The American Eevolution was essentially, from the stand-point of the Colonies, a conservative affair. With the Colonists, it was not the question of throwing off a yoke, but of refusing to submit to a yoke — to yield to a connection with Great Britain on new-fangled and degrading terms. The American colonies had never been under a yoke, strictly speaking. Their legislative inde- pendence had never been seriously challenged by THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 113 Great Britain. Now they were asked to surren- der that freedom and independence and come under the yoke of the British Parliament. Thomas Jefferson voiced the sentiment of Amer- ica in his famous words: "There is not a man in the British empire who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me I will cease to exist be- fore I yield to connection on such terms as the British Parliament proposes." Not the Colonists, but Parliament was the aggressor. The Ameri- cans were the conservatives, on the defensive. But the movement, once started, out-ran all ex- pectations and imagined limits, and ultimated in the erection of a positively new nation. So the Young People won, as they so richly deserved, and at an haur appointed in the deep councils of the God of nations, the nuptials were celebrated, George Washington acting in the ca- pacity of High Priest of the ceremony. The sol- emn and irrevocable vows were taken before the unstained shrine of Liberty, a shrine made holy by the light from approving heaven shining down upon it. John Marshall, representing the very holy of holies of our political system, the Supreme Judi- ciary, supplied the wedding ring. Samuel Adams served as "best man," and Thomas Jefferson and 8 114 A FAMILY QUABBEL. John Hancock as chief ushers. The preparation of the Marriage Contract had been committed to the capable hands of James Madison. Benja- min Franklin, John Adams and John Jay wit- nessed the compact. God Almighty here put together in the Consti- tution of The United States these two fundamen- tal principles of our Republican Government. It is certainly a matter of the highest satisfaction that all our history up until the present time has but confirmed the decree : "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." The guests came from every latitude and longi- tude then embraced in our territories. They were characterized by every variety of genius. Gladstone says of the event: "It is of more in- terest to study than any other period in human history." He adds, as to the guests, "Although there were only thirteen millions of people in the thirteen states, the group of statesmen that proceeded from them were a match for any in the whole history of the world, and were superior to those of any other one period. I am inclined to think that the future of America is of greater importance to Christendom at large than that of any other country." The wedding itself was a comparatively modest affair, considering the momentous issues involved. THE COURSE OF TRUE IX»VK. 115 Civil Liberty and Federal Union stood before the altar, clad in home-spnn which had been worn and shot almost to tatters in the prolonged strug- gle to overcome the opposition to the marriage. If they were poor before the War they were bankrupt now. They were poor in everything save in love of freedom and in the undeveloped possibilities of self-government, and in the vast natural resources of their great estate, concern- ing which they had only the most vague and limited ideas. Their entire household outfit con- sisted of an open Bible, an unfettered conscience, and the blessing of a Good God — a fairly good equipment for starting any home. The motto over their ample hearth, written so large the world might read it, was E Pluribus Unum. May not the world be challenged to produce their equal ? In the eyes of the Bride was "That light which never was on sea or land." An enthusiastic and admiring poet who was present declared of the Bride, "There lives more life in one of those fair eyes Than all the poets can in praise devise." In the young man's veins flowed the distilled quintessence of the best blood of fifty genera- tions. 116 A FAMILY QUASBEL. ''In beauty clad, With health in every vein And reason throned upon his brow.'' And now while they are preparing for the wed- ding journey we may be permitted to take an in- ventory of the wedding presents. THE GROOM'S GIFT TO HIS BRIDE. Some Important Distinctions Some Family Traits Some Fundamental Characteristics Some Family Jewels TH^ groom's gift TO HIS BRIDE. 119 ^fW As at most weddings, presents are some- ^1 1 1 times duplicated, so we shall find here ^1 1 that the lines are so often crossed and tangled that any attempt at historical sequence must be abandoned, except on the most broadly- general lines. And further it needs to be said that American history is not merely a foot-note to English histor>\ All the good things (in American civil life did not come from England. There will probably be several reversions to this fact later. But it needs to be stated here. First in order, of course, was the gift of the Groom to his Bride. It was not in any sense a mere fancy or ornamental gift, but one of price- less value. He incarnated in himself the best spirit of the Puritan, modified by the best in the Pilgrim. This incarnation was the biggest and the best gift he could bestow. Who were the Puritans? What is Puritanism? What was the diiference between the Puritans and the Pilgrims ? There has been much confus- ion here, and if, in answering these questions, this confusion can be brought into order, we shall obtain a more accurate estimate, and surely a greatly enhanced, appreciation, of the magnitude and value of this gift. The Puritan was not the outcome of any one race or eountrv. He was a child of the Reforma- 120 A FAMILY QUARREL. tion — ^born out of the uprisings against the abuses of the Church of Eome. He attained his ma- turity upholding liberty against the assaults of kingly and Papal power. He incarnated the spirit of civil and religious freedom. The name came into use soon after the ascension of Elizabeth to the English throne, since which time it has had a varied meaning, sometimes standing for re- ligious agitation and at others for political. Properly it belonged to those Calvinists, members of the Established Church who sought to re- form the church from within. Until compara- tivel}^ recent times the Puritans have received scant justice at the hands of English, and even American, historians. By way of illustration, note a few of the epithets sober historians have heaped upon them: "Men of savage brutality," "Merciless and unprincipled tyrants," "Most senseless and reckless of persecutors," "Last up- holders of the cruel and ignorant creed of the witch-doctors," ^^Bigoted republicans," "Out-do- ing the ferocity of the Indians a hundred-fold." So the catalogue of slander proceeds ad libitum ad nauseam. What a gift from a Groom to his Bride! The mistake is in holding the Puritans responsible for what some reckless New Eng- landers did. They were Calvinists in religion and republicans THE groom's gift TO HIS BRIDE. 121 in politics, and no one has ever questioned their zeal in religion or their love of liberty as men. It was not the Puritans alone but the Englishmen who perpetrated the offenses against humanity which want of knowledge charges to popular gov- ernment and a Calvinistie faith. When the chil- dren of Puritan fathers shall have learned to tell the truth about their parents they will have learned to respect them. The Pilgrims, to which company the Groom belonged, were rebels out and out against the policy of James I., who sought by pure brute force, to establish religious uniformity — an eternal im- possibility while human nature is constituted as it is — and separating themselves from the Church of England, formed churches of their own. They were exiles for religion. The Pilgrims went to Holland for about twelve years and then came to America, landing at Plymouth Rock. The Puritans remained in England while the Pil- grims were building their colonies in America. Learning of the success of the Pilgrims in Amer- ica, the Puritans, who comprised about two-thirds of the total Protestant population of England, determined to emigrate. This they did in large numbers, the first coming over in 1628 and set- tling on Massachusetts Bay. Though while in England they were staunch members of the Es- 122 A FAMILY QUABBEL. tablished Church, they had not been long in America until they joined the Pilgrims in adopt- ing the independent form of church government, and becoming separatists like their Pilgrim neigh- bors. The Puritans are blamed for the execution of the Quakers, the quarreling with the Baptists, and the burning of witches. As to the truth of these charges the later historians, using the mod- ern method of writing history, are modifying them greatly. They were stern, severe, and rigid men in religious belief and discipline. They practiced short patience with those who disagreed with them in either doctrine or practice. There was doubtless much that was unlovely in the charac- ter of those Puritans. It is very easy, at this distance, to fling sneers at them, but Macaulay says, "No one sneered at them who had met them in the halls of debate, or who had crossed swords with them on the field of battle." It is unfortunate that Nathaniel Hawthorne, himself a distinguished descendant of them, should feel moved to say : "Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors, and let each suc- cessive generation thank him not less fervently for being one step farther from them in the march of ages." On account of their plain dress and close-cropped hair and psalm-singing and THE groom's gift TO HIS BRIDE. 123 severe habits and simple religion, an easy-going, luxury-loving generation called them in derision "Puritans!" But those Puritans were the re- generators of modern England, and, with the Pil- grims, became the fountain head of all that is purest in life, highest in thought and deepest in character and truest in action in the life of the New World. They had convictions as high as heaven and as deep as hades and as strong as the mighty mountains of the continent they set- tled. They had the sense to hear the voice of God and the courage to obey to the last syllable. They could not be intimidated by power, nor dismayed by hardships, nor purchased by pat- ronage, nor over-awed by superior numbers. It was in the solid granite of these bed-rock convic- tions the foundations of this New Home were laid. We may abuse Puritanism as we please, but, as Carlyle assures us "It was a genuine thing." It was the beginning of America. Those who in England left the Established Church, were called Brownists, Separatists, or Independents, and from them came the Pilgrim Fathers who settled at Plymouth Eock. They agreed in doctrine and in almost everything else, except church polity, with the Puritans. They were a milder type of reformers, did not perse- cute others, were broader-minded than the Puri- 124 A FAMILY QUABBEL. tans, and were more deeply imbued with the spirit of civil and religious liberty. The educa- tion which they received in Holland made them true liberals when the federation which issued in the American Republic, was first formed. They learned to love the refugees of other faiths. It was this Pilgrim spirit which deeply modified the Puritan character, dominating the early coun- cils of the colonies, and giving to us most that is distinctively American in our civil iustitutions. And so, in this strong Puritan spirit and faith, modified and made tolerant by the not less strong spirit of Pilgrimism, was laid the corner stone of American liberties — the choicest and most lasting and the most precious gift of Civil Liberty to his bride. These rich and rare Family Jewels which had been accumulated at measureless cost through many centuries, and gathered from many races and out of many lands Civil Liberty laid in the fair hands of his Bride. These Jewels were flash- ing with the glory of many a martyrdom, and were mellowed by the holy radiance of innumer- able sacrifices for the true Faith. They were "gems of the first water," and were enclosed in an austerely plain cabinet of wood that had been seasoned in the martyrs^ fires. This was the choic- est, most lasting, and, counted in the terms of sac- rifice, the most precious bestowal he could make. THE BRIBERS DOWRY. Wealthy and Aristocratic Connections Through Repining Fires An Original Document The Title — Deed of the People Education and Toleration Some Family Obligations THE bride's dowry. 127 ^TT The Holland ancestry of the Bride ^^1 1 has been set forth already. She came ^ll to America by way of England's Roy- alty, having been at one time a very pro- nounced, Cromwell-hating Cavalier. Many of her Father's family were down in ''The Old Dominion." However, the free air she had breathed during those twelve years spent in Hol- land before embarking to the New World, and particularly her occasional intercourse with her young English Pilgrim up in Plymouth, had been stirring to their profoundest depths all her best Holland traditions and principles. She has not forgotten that her ancestors were from a land that in art and music and commerce and industry and wealth was two hundred years ahead of Eng- land. Motley tells us that, prior to the revolt from Spain ^'Holland had a population of at least three millions of people, the most industrious, the most prosperous, perhaps the most intelligent in the world." They were a people with largely the same blood as the English, and with the same inherited traits of character, but very dif- ferently educated. Their courage knew no ^deld- ing. Some of the English Puritans fled across the Atlantic from a slight religious persecution, others remained at home and fought their king in a few pitched battles, and established a Com- 128 A FAMILY QUARREL. monwealth which went to pieces in eleven years. But the Puritans from Holland fought for their liberties at home for eighty years, facing and de- feating the bravest and best trained soldiers of Europe, — with flames, floods, gibbets, pestilence and famine thrown in — and every other atrocity that religious fanaticism could invent, and every horror that ever followed in the track of war. Out of that eighty years war emerged a Eepublic that for two hundred years was the greatest in the world. Out of those refining fires they emerged with a new character. Having them- selves endured everything that could be endured for civil and religious freedom, they themselves never lifted an oppressing hand, but opened their own land on all its boundaries for the oppressed and persecuted everywhere to find a refuge. It was in hospitable Holland the Pilgrims found a refuge before emigrating to America. Many of the best families of the Puritans also found refuge here. Motley says: "They are the most energetic and quick-witted people in the world," and an- other historian of equal authority calls the Hol- lander "The Yankee of Europe." Italy first re- ceived the impulse of the revival of learning after the long sleep of the Middle Ages, but Holland caught the inspiration soon after, and it was in THE bribe's dowry. 129 Holland where the freedom of the conscience and the rights of the individual citizen were first re- spected. These ideas made great progress in Holland. If printing from moveable type was not actually invented in Holland, it is certain at least that no other nation put the invention to better use. The first complete English Bible first made its appearance in Holland, the translation being made by Miles Coverdale, and not even in Germany, the home of the Reformation, were so many copies cir- culated and read as in Holland. This fact may ex- plain the deeply religious history of the Nether- lands. The first written constitution in Europe, in- deed for that matter in the world, was the treaty of Utrecht, binding together in federal union the seven Northern Provinces of the Netherlands. Five more provinces were added later making the total twelve. The University of Leyden was for a time the leading university in Europe. It was built by William of Orange to celebrate the lifting of the siege of the Spaniards from the city of the same name. The first act of the relieved people was to assemble in their several churches and return thanks to Almighty God for the relief from the seige. These were the men who, thirty-five years later, opened their doors to entertain and give a home to the Pilgrims from England. When 9 130 A FAMILY QUABBEL. France became Catholic the seat of learning was transferred from Paris to Leyden; and when it was settled that dissenters could not be educated in the English Universities^ they flocked to Ley- den in great numbers making that city, next to Edinburgh, the chief resort of learning in Europe. They were ver>^ wealthy, but wealth did not have the enervating effect it so generally has on a nation. The reason for this may lie in the fact that their physical position was such as to require constant toil to preserve their land from the sea. They were obliged to toil terribly. Tolera- tion became one of the fundamental principles of their Republic. It might, indeed, be called the cornerstone. All sects throve peaceably among them. Even the Jews, who denied the very Gospel, were not disturbed. This fundamen- tal principle they brought with them when they settled New York — ^the only one of the thirteen Original States which guaranteed absolute free- dom for religion. Virginia was the second to take this stand, but Thomas Jefferson who was chiefly instrumental in bringing it about, got his ideas of religion from France. We owe much to England, and our debt to her will never be denied nor outlawed. We have her vigorous language, we share her noble lit- THE bride's dowry. 131 erature, we have many of her customs and modes of thought, and claim to inherit some of her in- domitable energy, practical sagacity, habits of organization, and general love of fair-play and free-speech. But all this is not saying that the United States is simply a bit of England trans- planted to America. N'o claim whatever is made that our Puritan and Pilgrim forefathers, great and noble men though they were, invented the American Republic on the passage across the At- lantic. ''What a marvelous magician's bath the Atlantic must have been to enable them to work such miracles !'' It may humble our pride, but we may as well bow our heads and hear the truth that: A free school system existed among the Romans, and the Moors possessed it nine centuries ago; That the towTiship as the unit of government prevailed in Central Asia, probably before the great original Aryan division of the race, and now exists in Upper India. These venerable institutions lose none of the '^alo of republican antiquity" be- cause, instead of being invented by the passen- gers on the Mayflower, they were simply trans- ported in that historic vessel. The English have never lacked appreciation of themselves. They are great lovers of themselves and of everything pertaining thereto. Even when 132 A FAMILY QUABREL. they see a handsome foreigner they remark how like an Englishman he appears, and then express their pity that he is not an Englishman. It is a misfortune, though a very natural one, that all the histories of the United States have been writ- ten by men who were either English or of English descent. Thereby an undue bias has been given the indebtedness of America to English ideas and institutions. Whereas vastly more has come to us from Holland than from England; and even much of what has come from England had come originally to England from Holland. The grandfathers and fathers of the men who fought with Cromwell at Naseby and Dunbar received their military training under William of Orange and his son Prince Maurice. Crom- well's famous Ironsides were trained by Colonel Dalbier, a Hollander who gave Cromwell him- self his first instructions in the mechanical part of soldiering." The Puritans who settled Mas- sachusetts had all their lives been exposed to a Netherland influence, and some of their leaders had lived for a time in Holland. Thomas Hooker who gave Connecticut the "Typical Commonwealth," was a Hollander. Roger Wil- liams who founded Rhode Island was a Dutch scholar Avho read Dutch books to John Milton. William Penn, the Quaker settler of Pennsyl- THE bride's dowry. 133 vania, had a Dutch mother. New York and New Jersey were settled by the Dutch West India Compan}'. Why, we cannot with scientific accuracy even call Europe the Old World since modern scien- tists are telling us with great assurance, through the study of the rocks, that the American con- tinent was in existence above the sea while prac- tically the whole of Europe lay submerged. As to the Dowry this fair Holland maiden brought her husband, we maiy truthfully say, "Many have done excellently, but thou excellest them all." Proud indeed must she have been in being able to bring into her New Home, for its present adornment and its future security, such a priceless inheritance, gleaned by her forbears from the fringes of the Middle Ages in Europe, and those of Abraham and the Pharaohs in Asia and in Africa, down through all the centuries, and from all the nations and races of the then known and unknown world — treasures so desir- able that whole nations opened their veins and treasuries in vain to secure — The right of free and fearless speech ; A high standard of morality in civil, as well as in religious matters; A free press; A system of free schools; and a declara- tion in favor of complete religious toleration. As the early history of the American Republic is 134 A FAMILY QUABBEL. more deeply studied, and the more obscure ele- ments in its complex civilization are brought to light, and the silent, hidden streams of influence which make the Xation what it is are uncovered and explored, the more plainly will be seen the Country's lasting indebtedness to the rich and varied Dowry brought into her ^N'ew England- American Home by the Bride. This magnificent Dowry she presented in the priceless casket of the first written constitution for the government of a republic in the history of the world — ^the Connecticut Constitution, un- der which that community was governed for a period of one hundred and eighty years. SOME OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. The Huguenots John Alden and Priscilla Molines Scotland's Gift Gift of the **Old Dominion'' Puritan and Cavalier The Demure Quaker Some Other Characters and Characteristics Oi^ At Last SOME OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. 137 ^fW Having thus in order considered the gift ^1 I of the Groom to his Bride, and the Dowry, I brought to the Groom by the Holland Bride, we may now proceed to examine the pres- ents brought in with most cordial regards and best wishes by the neighbors and friends. First came the Huguenots. They were French refugees, first coming into notice as a religious and political party about the middle of the six- teenth century in the days of Catharine de Medici. Perhaps no other people have so suffered for conscience sake as have they. Persecuted in France, they sought refuge in nearly every other country in Europe, intermarrying with the people among whom they found refuge, thus adding the strength and purity of their blood to all modem races. In America they could be found in all the settlements. Here also they intermarried, most numerously with the English and the Hol- landers. In large numbers they settled in the Carolinas and affiliated with the Covenanters. The Huguenots have been well named ^'the far- off drum-beat of the Eevolution." It was chiefly Huguenot courage that fought out at Quebec the answer to the momentous question : "Shall Amer- ica belong to the Romanists, or to the Protes- tants?" Montcalm led the forces for the old regimen, Wolf for the new. The one fought for 138 A FAMILY QUABBEL. allegiance to king and priest and all the tyranny of the past; the other f ought for the habeas corpus, free inquiry, and a free people — for George Washington and all the future and undreamed glory of the American Kepublic. By all the accredited probabilities of war Montcalm ought to have won that day, because of his super- ior advantages. Both commanding generals were killed in the battle. Wolf and the new order won, and Wolf's patriotic cry when assured of victory, "I die happy!" was the "birth-cry of United States History." Out of the fires came those Huguenot sires, and out of the sires came the sons who were the heroes of Lexington and Yorktown. The Huguenots had been well trained to free thought and equal rights and the exercise of religious freedom. When these elements once enter vitally into a man's religion they will soon find their way out into his politics; for civil lib- erty and religious liberty are inseparable. The descendants of the Huguenots may be found in many of the most distinguished families in Eu- rope, including the Jloyal families of England, Germany, Prussia and others. They were a great people. They fought absolutism in every form, and loved liberty and ' * A Large-thoughted, Republican Church. ' ' They were -svilling to pay SOME OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. 139 a large price for a great thing, and they paid their all for liberty. They companioned with a great God and compassionated with the oppressed throughout the whole world. Mrs. Sigourney, one of their sweetest daugh- ters, sang of them: '^On all who bear Their name or lineage may their mantle rest : That firmness for the truth, that calm content With simple pleasures, that unswerving trust in Trial, adversity and death, which cast Such healthful leaven 'mid the elements That peopled the New World." Priscilla, the fair maiden who gave John Alden ^^the tip" that released him from his ambiguous and vicarious wooing, and herself from the do- mination of Miles Standish, the widower, the fierce little captain who had buried one good woman already, was the daughter of a Huguenot, William Molines. Priscilla Molines, who became Priscilla Alden, was the worthy progenitor of that most charming creature whose equal is not to be found in any other land on the earth, the Ameri- can Girl — who can take care of herself. What sort of a husband would a man, who had no bet- ter sense than to send a handsome young man to do his courting for him, make for a highspirited 140 A FAMILT QUABBEL. girl like Miss Priscilla? Or for any other Ameri- can girl, for that matter? The Huguenot cause began two hundred years before the American Republic was founded — be- fore this wedding occurred — and antedated the Reformation in Germany by several years, and the Reformation in Switzerland under Zwingli. Like all other Reformations, it began by putting the Bible into the hands of the people. Like the Puritans, the Huguenots were Calvinists in poli- tics and in theology and were Presbyterians in church polity. The First President of the new French Republic, in 1879 publicly declared "The Huguenot Church to be the Mother of Democ- racy." Henry Cabot Lodge says, "I believe that, in proportion to their numbers, the Huguenots produced and gave to the American Republic more men of ability than any other race.'* So great were the persecutions they suffered that no great number of them came from any particular part of Europe. They came from all parts of the Continent. The traits of character they brought with them to America were vivacity, buoyancy, cheerfulness — all of which had a tem- pering and softening influence on the somewhat too severe austerity of many of their neighbors. With religious principles unyielding and incor- ruptible, they combined moderation of judgment SOME OTHEB WEDDING GIFTS. 141 in non-essentials, and in social habits tliey were warm, simple and unrestrained. Their love of liberty was accompanied with a toleration which they had learned in the school of suffering through which they had passed. Cotton Mather said of them: "They deserve a place in our best affections." The Huguenot name of Baudouin, in its Ameri- can form Bowdoin, is held by the oldest college in Maine, founded as it was by James Bowdoin, son of a Huguenot and the father of a gov- ernor of Massachusetts. "The cradle of Liberty/' Faneuil Hall, was presented to the town of Bos- ton by Peter Baudouin, another distinguished Huguenot. They have taught Americans how to be cheerful and patient and invincible in persecu- tion and trial. Baird tells us that, "Next to the Puritans, we must unquestionably rank the Scotch as having largely contributed to form the religious charac- ter of the United States." The Scotch were in- deed the Puritans of the South. Unlike the Hol- landers, they were largely of Celtic stock, al- though the Celtic element in their character is not very marked. They founded no colonies or provinces, but were absent from none, and at the time of the American Revolution they were sup- posed to constitute at least one-third of the popu- 142 A FAMILY QUABBEL. lation of the colonies. The influence they ex- erted in the world's advancing civilization has not been surpassed, in its far-reaching and benef- icent results, by any other people of like numeri- cal strength. It was the Knox reformation that became the Pilgrimism and the Puritanism of England. John Knox put a soul under the ribs of Scotland's out- ward, material death, and made her "A believing Nation." The fire kindled in the High Church of Edinburgh spread its flames afar. By the light of its burning things were revealed that men had never seen before. For fifty years the fire burned fierce^, and then, out of the ashes of out-worn tyrannies consumed, came forth the fair forms of a habeas corpus, free parliaments, and a general new order of things in both church and state. "It was the one phase of Protestantism that ever achieved the rank of being a faith." Looking into the face of his Queen one day John Knox had the temerity to tell her that, "If princes exceed their bounds they may be resisted by force." Froude declares that utterance to be the "Creed of Republics in its first hard form." The echo of that fearless word was heard at Gettysburg in Lincoln's immortal phrasing: "Government of the people, for the people, by the people." This great utterance which the 90MB OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. 143 American people have erected into a classic, is only Knox's saying full grown. The Scotch took a prominent and important part in every event of moment in the formative period of our government and her institutions. Knox had trained the men who helped mightily to promote the doctrines of the equality of men, the rights of free speech, and free schools, and liberty in religion. Their very name, which is a synonym for caution, has become a guarantee of courage and of the strength which helped to lay strong the foundations upon which the fabric of freedom was reared. They settled all along the New England coast, great masses of them pouring into the Middle and Southern states. They founded Princeton college as the Pilgrims had founded Harvard. They swept in floods into the Carolinas, made the states of Kentucky, Ala- bama, Tennessee, and even in Virginia they at one time out-influenced the haughty Cavaliers. They took possession of the Mississippi Valley and brought it and the State of Ohio into the Union. A full year before the Declaration of Indepen- dence was signed at Philadelphia, the Scotch Pres- byterian church of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, publicly issued its Declaration of Independence in these words: 144 A FAMILY QUARREL. "We hereby absolve ourselves from all alle- giance to the British crown; we hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people." The manuscript of the Philadelphia Declaration is in the hand-writing* of a Scotchman, it was first printed by another Scotchman, a third Scotchman was the first to read it in public. These are per- haps only coincidences, but they give strong evi- dence that where anything pertaining to liberty ^vas happening the Scotchman was near at hand. Just one more quotation: Dr. John Wither- spoon, first President of Princeton college, a Scotchman born, when the Declaration lay be- fore the assembled delegates, uttered these solemn and inspiring words : "To hesitate at this moment is to consent to our own slavery. That notable instrument upon your table, which insures immortality to its au- thor, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not re- spond to its accent and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is unworthy the name of freeman." So large a place have the men of this stock held in our affairs that, of all those who have filled the office of President of the United States at least one-third have been of Scotch stock. To take out of American historv and achieve- SOME OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. 145 ment and character the influence of these great people would be like taking calcium out of light, carbon out of diamond, cause and effect out of history. When John Knox gave to Scotland her national power and character, he gave to the American Eepublic a tremendous reinforcement in effecting and maintaining Eepublican institu- tions. Surely no better wedding gift could have been bestowed than that w^hich came from the people of whom Soiithey , the poet, wrote : ' ' Wher- ever they fled, a blessing followed them." The gift of Virginia, where the first permanent p]nglish settlement was made in the New World, is worthy of more than a mere passing notice. Certainly this contribution was to have great influence on the destiny, whether for weal or woe, of this great Family. As between the early settlers of New England and those of Virginia we find two widely different types of character and of social order. New Eng- land was thrifty, energetic and progressive. In Virginia, while there was some progress, yet Eob- ert Beverley, himself a distinguished Virginian, wrote, "I am ashamed to say anything of its (Virginia's) improvements, because I must at the same time reproach my countrymen with a lazi- ness that is unpardonable.'' There was consider- able individual prosperity, but there was no pub- 10 146 A FAMILY QUABBEL. lie thrift. Of course manual labor was scorned by men who kept slaves to do their work. Note also a civil difference. The founders of New England were disposed to settle in groups of families, forming neighborhoods, villages, and later, cities. Their churches were Independent and were always open to free discussion. There was consequently the play of mind upon mind, mutual stimulation, mutual forbearance, easy re- ciprocation of social forces, and facility in indus- tries and in trades, as well as in maintaining churches and schools and literary organizations, and the exchange of books and letters. This co- operation promoted progress. The New Englan- der first built his church, then his school-house. At the very bottom of our American system lies a broad basis of education. In Connecticut every town that did not keep a school for at least three months of the year was fined. New England made much of education and had its school houses everywhere. The unit of government was the township in the management of which the suffrage was unrestricted. The so- cial structure was that of concentration. In Vir- ginia the social structure was that of domestic isolation. Virginia had few towns and many large plantatioDs, hence the county was the unit of government and the civil power was in the SOME OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. 147 hands of the few — the few being the rich plant- ers. They had no schools, nor wanted any. They did not care to educate either their black slaves or their white servants. Not until more than eighty years after the Jamestown settlement is there any mention whatever of, or any provision for the education of the youth. Berkeley's his- toric prayer is familiar to every school boy: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought dis- obedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them; and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." The church in Virginia was the Established Church of England, narrow, and intolerant. How low the tide of religion had fallen is suggested by the fact that men were fined for non-attendance, and a law was enacted by the Virginia Legislature compelling ministers to preach at least once on every Sunday and to administer the Communion at least once in a year. These contrasted condi- tions have been dwelt upon at such length in order to show the different atmosphere which surrounded these two young people, preliminary to the establishment of their New Home. As already pointed out, the Puritan character 148 A FAMILY QUARREL. differed widely from that of the Cavalier. The Cavalier stands for chivalry, courtly bearing and refined manners; the Puritan for created man- liness and invincible virtue. Chivalry feared dis- honor, the Puritan feared to do what was wrong. Chivalry adorned life, while the Puritan enriched life with the strong convictions of conscience, duty and God. Chivalry would die for a lady's glove, a stolen kiss, a fancied slight; Puritanism taught men how to die for human rights, for justice, freedom, and truth. Chivalry was a sen- timent, beautiful as it was inspiring; Puritanism was a principle that had in it the strength of God and the age-old passion for freedom. Each needed the other for the completion of American character. To the glory of the Cavalier be it said; when the testing times came, he showed how he could suffer and sacrifice and endure with the sternest of the Puritans. The Cavaliers have suffered many harsh judgments, but they never have been called cowards. The men and the measures which have grown out of the at first unpromising soil of "The Old Dominion/' have added much to America's prosperity at home as well as to her prestige abroad. Virginia's gift could ill be spared from the Family Collection. A proper combination of circumstances was all that was needed to bring the children of the Cav- SOME OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. 149 aliers into sympathy and active alliance with the children of the Puritans. Most of the Virginia leaders in the American Eevolution were lineal descendants of the men who had fought against Cromwell. Virginia has always known how to produce leaders. The Family Quarrel would have been settled much more easily but for such men as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. And now comes the demure Quaker. What possible gift would be acceptable from this quiet and passive people? Would it be denied if as- serted that they bring w hat, in many respects, is the best gift of any offered? What did they bring for which America is the better? They brought an Ideal Civilization. They forced their way to America in order to make the *^holy experiment of a free colony for all mankind." William Penn, the supreme apostle of this enterprise, secured from Charles II., in lieu of money owed his fa- ther by the Crown, a grant of land covering the State of Pennsylvania. Penn's ideals for his co- lonial government were high: equal toleration for all religious beliefs, no resort to military force, even for defense, kindness and Justice to the Indians, no oaths to be used in the administra- tion of justice. These high ideals have never been entirely realized, but much of their spirit has been grafted into American institutions. 150 A FAMILY QUAEBEL. The Quakers were the consistent and the per- sistent advocates of liberty for the white man, for the black man, for the red man, and for all other men. In church organization they had neither creed nor minister nor liturgy nor sacraments. In Eng- land they protested most vigorously against both despotic demands for religious uniformity, and the vassalage of either the body or the mind. Their contributions to the uplift of American institutions and American principles have always been salutary and often conspicuous. When seen at their best they stand for an ideal civilization. They hold the honor of being one of the few divisions of Christendom against which no charge of cruelty, selfishness or love of power can be laid. They served the State by what they were. The Puritans whipped them, robbed them, hung them, but they kept right on asserting them- selves, and refusing to defend themselves, until by their patient endurance they wore out the whips of their persecutors and brought scourge and scaffold into public disgrace. Won over by their beautiful spirit, the public finally rose up and demanded that the persecutions cease. Penn was democratic in spirit. N'ote his defi- nition of a free government : "Any government is SOME OTHKR WEDDING GIFTS. 151 free when the people are a party to the laws en- acted." He treated the Indians as brothers, and they reciprocated the treatment. One of the first facts we were taught in American history was that Pennsylvania was the only colony settled without bloodshed. This colony was controlled for over a hundred years by the Quakers. For sixty years after it was settled it had no legisla- tion for defense. Its homes were full of sweet- ness and strength, and it was one of the greatest powers in the American Revolution. Jamestown was the first English settlement on the Atlantic coast, Pennsylvania was next to the last and, after the New England, the most re- markable. Strangely though it may sound, nev- ertheless it is true that, in spite of all outward differences and mutual dislikes, there was an in- ward kinship between the Pennsylvania Quakers and the New England Puritans. Penn was mastered by a great passion to be both just and humane, he began by inoculating his young colony with the idea of civic generosity. He declared his purpose to "support power in reverence with the people; and to secure the people from the abuse of power.'^ An equilibrium which even the best of rulers have not found at all easy to preserve. "Whoever is right, the per- secutor must be wrong," was one of his oft-re- 152 A FAMILY QUARREL. peated sayings. Thus he established here in the Keystone of the invincible arch of Common- wealths one "over the turnpikes of which ideas traveled toll-free." But other gifts and other guests were in at- tendance. The German Lutherans were present with their high intelligence and morality. The Swedes brought their vigor and thrifty intelli- gence. The Danes and Norwegians^ the Protes- tant Poles and Piedmontese, men of stern and lofty virtue, invincible energy, and iron wills, just the substratum on which to build great and enduring States. Thus one by one they brought rich gifts to the feet of the Bride of the New Eepublic. Has an equal array of gifts ever before been laid at the feet of any bride, since Eve, decked with the de-w-pearls of Paradise and cro\\Tied with the first rainbow, received the new-made world as her wedding gift? Civil Liberty x\nd Federal Union — at last these two are one — and it took them nearly a century after the wedding to tell which was THE ONE. Returned from the wedding trip, they set them- selves to the agreeable task of getting acquainted with each other — which, by the way, is usually SOME OTHER WEDDING GIFTS. 153 about the first and most important thing married people have to do. If they love each other de- votedly, and if they both have good common sense, it will be all right; otherwise, look out for storm signals. THE WEDDING JOURNEY. Exploring the Estate A Sublime Picture Some Sentiment *' Lovers Young Dream" THE WEDDING JOUBNEY. 157 ^JTTAnd now they are off for the *'wed- H^ll ding journey/' Instead of going abroad ^1 1 for this trip they propose very sen- sibly to do some going at home. In other words they intend to explore, as best they can, their great estate. History is chal- lenged to produce a sublimer picture than is here suggested. Under skies the fairest, endowed with resources the amplest, surrounded by conditions the most auspicious, see this young Giant putting forth titanic strength, and marching with mighty strides from east to west over his prospective Continental Estate which had been deeded to him in fee simple by God Almighty, — ^who made it for him and had held it in sacred reserve for six thousand years until he should be ready to occupy it, — ^big with the belief that, not only all America from pole to pole will ultimately pass to his control, but that all humanity, to the end of time, shall be mightily influenced if not ac- tually dominated by him. By his side, in queenly dignity, walks his stately Bride, loveliest of earth 's fair maidens. The light of the morning is in her radiant face. Through her purple veins surge the bounding tides of a race-wide sympathy for the helpless, suffering vic- tims of imperial oppression and of civil and social and religious wrong. In one hand she carries the 158 A TAMILY QUABBEL. distaff, eloquent symbol of her unwearying serv- ice to humanity. Her other hand is held in the giant grip of her kingly spouse, lending ardor to his strength, valor to his heart, and invincible mightiness to his sword. "Her voice is heard through rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands, Her face across his fancy comes And gives the battle to his hands." And these two are one. Passing together over the desert wastes and poisoned bogs and swamps, the arid plain becomes a garden of gods, the springs of health leap from the rocks, and the habitations of death are transformed into sources of life. All along their pathway bloom the flow- ers and ripen the fruits of civilization. Com- merce builds her railroads and launches her mighty ships. Industry sings its daily song of happy and contented toil. Art creates the monu- mental masterpieces of genius — the dull marble speaks and the dead canvas glows with life and beauty. Invention reduces the drudgery of hu- man toil and multiplies the conveniences and comforts of life. Science masters disease and spreads its leaves for the healing of the nations. Education erects her temples of learning and gathers her students in the thronged gates of THE WEDDING JOXJBNEY. 159 wisdom. While over all, religion, unbiased by sectarian interference, and uncompromised by- ecclesiastical pretentions, pours the heaven-en- dued wealth of her benediction, filling all with the preservative power of her incorruptible life. And these two are one. They are the voice of God for the utterance of his latest and greatest revelation of civil rights and civil duties to man- kind. They proclaim a message of manhood un- shackled and glorious, of citizenship intelligent and devout, of humanity broad and tolerant. Their advance marks the highest ascent of in- tellectual and civil achievement in human his- tory. Promulgating the profoundest principles of citizenship, they have awakened the deepest convictions of civil duty. In a word — ^they rep- resent the mightiest civil forces in the world working for the kingdom of God and the uplifting of the nations. ENLARGING THE ESTATE. Louisiana Purchase Some Wild Prophecies Some Corner Lots Florida — Texas — ^New Mexico — California Alaska The World's Next Great Empire Some Modern Improvements Family Resources 11 ENLARGING THE ESTATE. 163 ^JTT They returned from the wedding journey ^^1 1 with a very much greater appreciation of ^1 1 the vastness and possibilities of their great estate. Belonging, both of them, to a very pro- lific and virile stock, they anticipated a numer- ous progeny, and in anticipation of the multi- plied millions that should in the coming cen- turies crowd to their shores, and throng their door-steps, movements are soon set on foot look- ing to the territorial expansion of the estate. First came the great Louisiana Purchase, bought from Napoleon, who is suspected of hav- ing sold it for political reasons. The suspicion grew out of a remark which he made after the bar- gain had been closed : "This accession strengthens forever the power of the United States. I have given England a rival." The purchase price was fifteen million dollars — about $15 per square mile. President Jefferson had doubts about his con- stitutional rights in this purchase. The pur- chase was opposed in congress. Note some of the sage remarks heard in the debate : Senator White of Delaware, "I believe it would be the greatest curse that could at present be- fall us." Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, ^^The constitu- tion never was, and never can be strained to lap over all the wilderness of the west * * * It was 164 A FAMILY QUABBEL. never intended to form a covering for the in- habitants of the Missouri and the Red River country. To stretch it over them will rend it asunder. * * * You have no right to throw the rights and liberties of the fathers into ^hotch-pot' with the wild men on the Missouri, nor with the mixed though more respectable, race of Anglo- Hispano-Galo-Americans who bask on the sands in the mouth of the Mississippi. * * * * The bill, if it passes, is a death-blow to the constitution.^' Senator McDuffie, ^'Of what use will this terri- tory be for agricultural purposes? I hope to God we may never own it." The above utterances sound like anything else more than they sound like wisdom, considering the wealth of pasturage, mining, cultivation of the land — indeed everything pertaining to the sustenance and growth of a large and prosperous population. It is said that some of the men who most bitterly opposed the acquisition of the territory were in later years very anxious to ob- tain large personal interests in it. Florida was purchased from Spain shortly after for five million dollars. Then came Texas, and New Mexico, and California and the Gadsden pur- chase from Mexico, and to cap the climax, the purchase of Alaska from Russia for a trifle over seven million dollars. ENIARGING THE ESTATE. 165 Every one of these extensions was opposed at the time by many good people; every one of them won subsequent general approval. Kone more heartily approved in later years the Louis- iana Purchase than did Josiah Quincy, who at the time so bitterly opposed it. In more recent years Hawaii and Porto Eico and the Philippines have come under the flag. From the Louisiana Purchase territory seventeen great states have been erected. Into any one of a dozen of these new states the combined British Isles could be dropped and there would be plenty of room to spare. Into these states have been poured mil- lions of our very best men and women. The American "star of empire" is already moving toward the Pacific coast. Prophecies are being freely made that the world's next great empire will be around the Pacific ocean as the last was around the Atlantic. American citizens need to be aroused to the meaning of this enlarged terri- torial foundation of the Republic. Our territory has been quadrupled and our coast-line tripled between the time of the Louisiana Purchase and the Gadsden Purchase. This career of territorial expansion is afforded no parallel in the history of the world. The broadening touch of American civilization means transformed lands and changed people, and 166 A FAMIL1 QUABKEL. prosperous, law-abiding, intelligent American citi- zens. We must not shrink away from the new tasks and the new problems. We must meet them as we have met every other task and problem in our unrivaled history — meet them to master them for the good of the world. American capital and enterprise are overflowing everywhere. We are a great people with a great government and a great foundation and we must not be satisfied to do less than great things. From an area of 827,000 square miles we have grown to an area of about four million square miles; and from a population of less than three millions to a population of more than ninety millions. !N'ot only have they greatly enlarged, but also greatly improved, the estate. As they got be- neath the surface they began to find gold in the streams, and silver in the rocks. It is said that the images of all the sovereigns of the civilized world are stamped on silver and gold dug out of American mines. Consider just a few facts : We have a territory larger than all the ancient empires combined. Out of our single state of Texas can be carved the whole German Empire and have enough trim- mings left over to reconstruct England and Wales. ENXAEGING THE ESTATE. 167 All England, Ireland, Wales and Belgium could be buried in the state of California.. Englishmen are proud of their river Thames, and Italians boast of their yellow Tiber, as do Frenchmen of the historic Seine, but their com- bined lengths would scarcely equal that of our Yukon, and you could pour all of them into the Mississippi at flood tide and they would not make a splash nor raise the river half an inch. Four- fifths of all the fresh-water on the globe is in our lake system. We have forests enough to build houses for the world to live in, and coal enough to warm them. We have wheat enough to feed the world and cotton enough to clothe it. It is said that the late King Edward derived more revenue from his personal investment in American securities than King George exacted from all the colonies. Transport yourself for a few moments back to the America of the days when the treaty between Great Britain and the United States was signed in Paris at the close of the Eevolution. Our terri- tory nowhere touched the Gulf of Mexico or crossed the Mississippi Eiver. Not a state had a million inhabitants, not a city could boast 50,000. Not even in the homes of the rich could be found a bath-room, a furnace, or a gas jet. There were no omnibuges nor street cars. There were no 168 A FAMILY QUARREL. steel peus, envelopes, or postage-stamps. To send a letter from Boston to New York cost eighteen cents and required ten days to get an answer by- return mail. To write to your congressman at Washington from Philadelphia cost twenty-five cents. You would not find a public library, nor feel the warmth of a stove, nor see a lawn mower, a sewing machine, a revolver, a breech-loading gun, a friction match, a photograph, or a chromo. You would never have sent a telegram, nor heard a steam-whistle, nor talked over a telephone, — but why continue the well nigh interminable list, Look into a shop-window next time yon go shop- ping and remember that almost nothing that is displayed in that window was in existence as an article of commerce in that time. If a daily paper of the present having a circulation of 10,- 000 were printed on the presses of that day, the first number of the edition would be three months old before the last number was off the press. A FAMILY HAVING IDEAS. Free Thought and Free Speech Temperamental Differences Drifting Apart The Great Debate Two Troublesome Questions The Family Market Basket The Domestic Servant Problem The Greatest Question A FAMILY HAVING IDEAS. 171 ^rrr This was a Family having ideas. From HI I the very beginnings of articulate speech, ^1 1 the boys and girls growing up around the ample and ever expanding board, were taught by their forbears to do their own thinking. And, like their fathers, they did a lot of it. And they were not afraid to think out loud either. The freest and widest liberty of speech was not only permitted but actually encouraged in the Family circle. The greatest problems of statecraft and of economics, as well as the profoundest questions of ethics and morals and religion, of church and of state, were discussed in this open forum with a frankness and freedom that astounded the na- tions of the Old World. It not only astounded them but it made them afraid lest their own fam- ilies might catch the to them dangerous conta- gion of open speech, and break out into unruly debates. Nor were their fears without founda- tion, for men throughout the civilized world speak with a greater freedom because of free speech in America. This is a part of America's contribution to the progress of civilization. The members of this prolific Family had learned the art of thinking and the science of debate from ancestors who were skilled in all the arts of the forum. The children were in- tellectually free because the fathers were free 172 A FAMILY QUABBEL. men. They flinched from no issue, and were al- ways ready to accept full responsibility for both their arguments and their actions. The years immediately following the second war with the Mother Country, were undisturbed by any agitating questions. It is known as the era of general good feeling. The condition of the Southern section of the Family was most prosperous. Commercial prosperity in the North- ern section was rapidly recovering from the shock of the war that had almost destroyed it. Dur- ing these years of general good will, the two sides of the Family had, perhaps unconsciously, drifted apart. Their respective interests and character were widely divergent. The North was absorbed in manufacturing, the South in agricul- ture. In character and temperament, it was the Puritan and the Pilgrim as against the Cavalier. The natural differences were revealed and in- tensified by the acrimonious debates which fol- lowed. Neither side of the Household took any great pains to get better acquainted with the other side. Selfishly absorbed in the pursuit of their own interests, they lost sight entirely of the deep common ties by which they were united. Mutual understandings would have prevented, as they usually do, endless trouble. If the North had known the South, or the A FAMILY HAVING IDEAS. 173 South the North, there would have been no Quarrel. The Sunday morning followmg the firing on Fort Sumter, Henry "Ward Beecher is reported to have said in substance: There is a little war-cloud the size of a man's hand gather- ing yonder in the Southern sky ; there probably will be a few electrical discharges of artil- lery, and then a shower that will wash all the Southland clean. In that declaration he voiced the general sentiment of the North. He as lit- tle dreamed as did others that the shower would be, not a shower, but a flood — a flood of blood, fraternal blood. About the same time a governor of one of the Carolinas is credited with having remarked that he could take his riding-whip and drive every soldier north of Mason's and Dixon's line into the Atlantic ocean. Of course he might have done it; but he didn't even try. The North was generally looked upon by the South as a lot of mercenary slaves — too busy making money, and too tame to go out and fight. The Quarrel grew out of protracted and bit- ter discussions of two questions which ever have been fruitful in causing domestic trouble — the Family Market Basket, and the Domestic Servant problems. Almost from the beginning, the two sides of the Household had been divided upon 174 A FAMII.Y QUABBEL. these matters. In the debate upon these two problems, a third question was brought to the surface — one which questioned the very integrity and unity of the Household. A survey of these three matters will aid us greatly to appreciate the spirit which, humanly speaking, seemed to render the Quarrel inevitable. The rather se- vere limits of this treatise will permit only the very briefest analysis of the situation. We shall get at the matter better perhaps by taking what seems to us to be the logical, rather than the historical, sequence of events. First, then, there was the question of the Market Basket — the Tariff, if you please. The South looked upon the protective tariff as fatal to their prosperity. It would increase their bur- dens by raising the price of practically all the ar- ticles they were required to buy. The large prof- its would enrich only the Northern manufac- turers. The tariff of 1824 had borne heavily upon the South, producing great irritation against having to bear all the burdens of protection with- out sharing any of its benefits. This irritation was greatly increased when the "Bill of Abomi- nations" was passed in 1828, and the constitution- ality of the act was questioned. The N^orth was outstripping the South in population and wealth. The Federal Government was in the control of A FAMILY HAVING IDEAS. 175 the North. "The minority must be protected from the tyranny of the majority." Calhoun came forward with his doctrine of "nullification" and was promptly, though only temporarily, sup- pressed by President Jackson. According to Cal- houn's argument, the Federal Constitution was only a limited instrument by which the sovereign States had delegated to the Federal Government certain general powers. As soon as the Federal Government should go outside those limitations, the sovereign States had a right to nullify its ac- tion. Calhoun professed no desire to destroy the Union, but on the other hand claimed that only in this way could the Union be preserved. This was the South^s only remedy. But there was another question, even more irritating to the South than the tariff question. It was the ever-provoking domestic-servant ques- tion — the irrepressible Slavery Problem. Into this fair Home Of Freedom had been brought, as a servant, a bastard child, offspring of the tyranny of the Old World. Within twelve months after the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, a Dutch Man-o'-War entered James river and landed an ill-fated cargo of twenty African slaves. No other cargo ever landed on American shores was destined to cause a thousandth part of the trouble this cargo caused. 176 A FAMILY QUABREL. It grew into a great monster institution. It was fostered by certain peculiar social and industrial conditions. It grew and fattened on the very- vitals of the Family. It very early became a troublesome factor in the political, and even in the social and religious life of the Home. Ben- jamin Franklin launched a brave attempt to have it cast out of the Family, the peace of which it was constantly disturbing and rapidly destroying altogether. It early became a troublesome child. As early as 1769 the Virginia Legislature enacted a law to prevent the importation of any more negroes to be held as slaves. By order of the king the Gov- ernor vetoed the bill. It may not be generally known that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a paragraph severely denouncing the King — George III. — for uphold- ing the slave-trade, and putting the United Colo- nies on record as opposed to its further con- tinuance in America. But then as now, the "in- terests" were on hand to look out for them- selves in matters legislative, and New England Ship masters combined with Carolina rich plant- ers, and the ** offensive paragraph'' was stricken out — but by a very small majority. In 1784 Thomas Jefferson prepared and had introduced into the National Congress, a measure prohibiting A FAMILY HAVING IDEAS. 177 all extension of slavery in the National Domain, the very principle upon which seventy years later the Republican Party was founded. If Jefferson could have established the principle at that time it would have changed the entire course of Amer- ican history. Jefferson did all that any man in his times could do to have Virginia taken out of the list of slave-states. The whole institution was extremely obnoxious to him in every way. 'T. tremble for my Country/^ he says, "when I think of the Negro and know that God is just." Compromise followed compromise, but it only grew stronger and bolder and more provokingly insolent. It wrapped its strong arms around the Church, around the State, around the Altar, around the Fireside It finally became so defiant that, when threatened, it in turn threatened in its overthrow to subvert, the very foundations of Christianity and of Civil and Social order. Not- withstanding aU of Jefferson^s pleas against it, his own state, Virginia, and the South generally sympathised with it. The predominating agri- cultural pursuits of the South made it profitable. The manufacturing North had sold its unprofit- able slaves to the agricultural South where they could be used with commercial advantage. It was a bit of "good business" for both parties. 12 178 A FAMILY QUABB8L. From a business standpoint, neither part}^ had just cause for complaint. As the North grew relatively stronger and the South relatively weaker, slavery became more and more a dominant issue in politics. Demands were made concerning it by the South to which the North was unwilling to accede. The issue gradually shifted from a conflict between agricul- tural and manufacturing interests, to one between slave labor and free. Every possible element of bitterness was in- jected into the discussion by the Northern aboli- tionists. With them, no contract or agreement was sacred that involved the continuance of slavery. They made no exception of the Federal Constitution. They preferred the destruction of the Union to living under a flag that sanctioned slavery. They bitterly attacked the slave own- ers and the South in general. The South was proud and sensitive, and resented with equal heat any criticism of any of her peculiar institutions. Again and again in these discussions the ques- tion of the sovereignty of the states, and their right to secede from the Union, was brought to the surface. This brings up the consideration of the third issue raised — the Integrity and Unity of the Household. The right of a state to withdraw from the A FAMILY HAVING IDEAS. 179 Union was claimed on the theory that the sov- ereignty of individual states forming a confed- eracy, or union, had not been absorbed into a new sovereignty. It is a right which has often been claimed by weaker states when their rights were threatened by the stronger. The history of Europe furnishes many illustrations of this ac- tion. Denmark, Norway, Sweden are conspicu- ous examples. Indeed voluntary separations were frequently discussed in the North. The Legisla- ture of Massachusetts threatened to secede if the Louisiana Purchase was consummated. A con- vention of New England states in 1814 threatened to secede if certain ends could not be gained. At least three states came into the Union with the -distinct provision that they might retire from it whenever they wished. It has been claimed by distinguished historians that, as a matter of fact, from the historical point of view, neither side of the Household was right in the contentions which culminated in 1861. The United States was not a Nation, neither were the states sovereign; but from the embryo po- litical communities of 1776-1778, in which no proper sovereignty existed anywhere, two nation- alities were slowly evolved, and two sovereignties were formed. The North and South each ful- filled most of the requirements for a Nation, but 180 A FAMILY QUARREL. they were mutually unlike, and even hostile. According to this view, the sovereignty of the States was recognized in the Articles of Con- federation, and this recognition was not surren- dered under the Federal Constitution. Boston, in the North, and Charleston, in the South, were the social, commercial, and political storm centres. The controversy raged around three men particular^, though many others were drawn into the maelstrom. President Jackson's creed was: "The Union must and shall he pre- served." John C. Calhoun regarded the Federal Constitution as a compact or league between Sovereign States. Daniel Webster proclaimed, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." As a matter of fact the whole argument turned upon what the American people really did, or in- tended to do, when they adopted the Federal Constitution. Did they simply create a league between sovereign states, or did they create a National Government? Did they mean that this National Government should operate immediately upon individuals, and, without superseding the state government, stand superior to them and claim a prior allegiance from all citizens? It ought not to be difficult to see now that, in point of fact, they did create such a National Govern- A FAMILY HAVING IDEAS. 181 ment. Whether they realized at the time the vast import of what they were doing is another question. Webster's main contention, which he sustained with collossal strength, was, that our fathers formed a regular popular government, as against a mere league, and that the Federal Con- stitution was something more than "an amend- ment to the Articles of Confederation." If we are to have a government it must act like other governments, by majorities. This Government, through its Supreme Court, must be the ultimate expounder and interpreter of its own powers. Gradually, under these stirring debates, the slumbering spirit of national pride awoke in Northern hearts. When the North fully grasped the situation, its decision was as quick and as de- cisive as a slice of the Day of Judgment. This feeling crystallized instantly when Lincoln came forward with his famous declarations : "The slav- ery question never can be successfully comprom- ised." "This Government cannot exist half slave and half free. A house divided against itself can- not stand. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided." He would save the Union without disturbing slavery if he could do so; if not, then slavery must go and the Union must be preserved at any cost. The issue was clearly drawn. Prominent and 182 A FAMILY QUAEBEL. influential Northern papers, particularly the New York Tribune, favored allowing those states which desired to leave the Union, to go in peace. Throughout the South the hot Cavalier blood was racing furiously. Events happened with bewil- dering rapidity, and, 'ere the Nation was half aware, the greatest Civil War in human history was on. THE QUARBEL. A Home Not Built In a Day Testing the Foundations The Great Arbitrator Worth All It Cost A Compromising Situation ''Unfinished Business" Chastened and Delivered Better Understandings Two Theories of Household Government Increased Prosperity A Bold Prophecy THE QUABBEL. 185 ^fTT This political structure had not been built HI I in a day. The treasures this Home con- ^1 1 tained had been accumulated during more than two thousand years. Among them were the more or less perfected efforts at self-government in all time and among all civilized peoples. Fur- thermore, the responsible heads of the Family de- sired to test the foundations upon which this Union had been built. Was this Home a mere partnership affair, dissolvable at the will of either party to the contract ? Or was it, as they surely intended, a true marriage that had been con- ceived in freedom and was a league of soul and body for life, dissolvable neither by states nor by men? Was it an establishment, or was it a Home? These were the questions which had been agitating the entire Household, and, under some form of political subterfuge or other, for half a century destroying its peace. They must now be faced in their naked reality and settled for all time. By virtue of the authority conferred on him by the Marriage Contract, Abraham Lincoln had complete jurisdiction in the settlement of the case. His position has been stated on a previous page. The Union must be preserved, let what else go that may. ^^Our First American" had the opportunity. He also had the prophetic vision of 186 A FAMILY QUABBEL. wise measures, and the high quality of courage to heroically enforce them. He first filled up the front yard with a million armed men. He then stripped from the Marriage Contract all the shameful compromises and concessions by which it had been misinterpreted; then turned it over and wrote the Emancipation Proclamation on the reverse side of it. The physical struggle was severe beyond pre- cedent because Americans fought on both sides. It was costly beyond estimate in lives and treas- ure; but it was worth all it cost, for it east the apple of discord into hades, cemented the Union of the Family with new strength, and gave the nations around the world a new pulse-beat for freedom. Consider some of the compromising conditions under which this proud, boastful and rapidly growing Family had been living. The same na- tion that had framed the Declaration of Indepen- dence and had poured out its choicest blood and its costliest treasure to vindicate the principle of that Declaration before the world, had for nearly a century denied to a whole race the very same rights for which she had so valiantly contended in her own behalf. She had made large investments in her fellow men, and had in time produced a race having no rights which others were bound THE QUAKBiaL. 187 to respect. Wrong in any land, here where a nation was building itself up on the idea of in- dividual equality before the law, the wrong be- came a crime. By the very laws of God upon which she pre- tended to build, she must be chastened and de- livered. The price of freedom must be paid afresh in the Nation's tears and blood; for the Civil War was but the Revolutionary War under the head of "Unfinished Business." Through those awful years of strife we have no desire to go, and presume our readers have no greater desire to do so than have we. Suf- fice it to say that it did not break up the House- hold. It strengthened, rather than weakened, the whole framework of the structure, and settled several very important points beyond further de- bate. It did not establish, for that had been established in the very beginning, but it brought out before the world in a manner as never be- fore, the true character of our government. It is neither a pure democracy nor a pure republic; it is both combined. Popular control of the gov- ernment is guaranteed by the choice of represen- tation on the basis of population, and the abso- lute equality of the states has been hitherto as- sured by equal representation in the senate. In no other country is there found this combination 188 A FAMILY QUARBEL. of rule by both the people and the states. It is our one unique American feature. This feature was in the purpose of those who founded our gov- ernment — a government which might be defined as being a mild Democratic Republic, with strong leanings toward a conservative Democracy. Having thus been brought to a better mutual understanding of the principles upon which our government was founded, it might be said in per- fect fairness that the Sons of the gallant South have discovered for themselves what no amount or quality of Northern logic ever could have taught them: that local self-government can ex- ist in any true sense only where the equal rights of all are respected and when all are upheld by a great united nation. It has demonstrated that while this is a great country nevertheless it is not large enough for two flags; and that the states of the Union are united, not mechanically, as beads on a string; but vitally, as members of a living body. There are two ancient theories of household government. One is that the household revolves around the children. In this case every new member of the home becomes a new centre, and the result is increasing confusion and conflicting authorities and unstable government. The other theory is that the children should be trained to THE QUABBEL. 189 revolve around the household. In this case the centre of authority is always fixed, and the fam- ily may multiply its members without limit and no confusion results. The government is fixed and stable. One valuable result of the awful contention was to locate definitely, and settle for- ever the centre of authority. It has been fixed beyond further debate. As the story advances its chapters brighten. It has brought increased prosperity to both sides of the Household. This is particularly true of the South. Under the enervating influences of slave-labor she was greatly hampered in the de- velopment of her natural resources, of the vast- ness and wealth of which she then not even dreamed. But under the inspiration of free la- bor she has applied herself to the discovery and development of these vast resources with a suc- cess which is simply phenomenal. A whole ^ew South teeming with industries has arisen. Her furnace-fires are glowing, her spindles are whirl- ing, her quarries echo with the blast, and a healthful glow pervades all her industries. Her manufactured products are today the successful rivals of those of New England in the markets of the world. I have the best of authority for the following statements: So far as the industrial South is 190 A FAMILT QUABBEL. concerned, it would require a bigger ISTorthern army to reimpose slavery upon it than it did to remove it. If a full vote and a fair count were had in the states originally comprising the con- federacy, leaving out entirely the colored vote, they would vote overwhelmingly to sustain the verdict of the War. Henry W. Grady, once the gifted editor of *^The Atlanta Constitution," delivered an ad- dress in New York City not long before his death. In this address he uttered the bold proph- ecy that John Brown would yet have a monu- ment, erected by the sons of Confederate sol- diers, commemorating the freedom he brought to the white, as well as to the black men of the South. He then proceeded to show how "our late unpleasantness" grew not more out of the effort to make black men free than it did out of a vicious endeavor to make white men slaves. This prophecy was, of course, received with a due allowance for the enthusiasm of the occasion, and the hearty cordiality with which the !N"orth had received him. When the writer read that speech, and noted the remarkable prophecy, the impression upon him was one of amazed incredu- lity. * ' A monument to John Brown by the Sons of Confederate veterans!" Impossible! But some years since our faith in that prophecy THE QUABBEL. 191 was mightily strengthened, when, standing on the historic heights overlooking the Hudson, at the time of the dedication of Grant's tomb, we saw sitting side by side, as guests of honor, the widow of General Grant and the widow of Jeffer- son Davis, while in almost interminable proces- sion there marched platoon after platoon of the Sons of Confederate soldiers who were proud of the opportunity to honor the great General who had conquered their fathers and had saved their country and ours. Some of those who wit- nessed that sight recalled the prophecy and thought that "more impossible things might hap- pen'' than its fulfillment. If further confirma- tion is needed, witness the recent reunion of Union and Confederate veterans at Gettysburg. THE HONEYMOOI^. Wedding Anniversaries **The Cotton "Wedding" Perplexing Family Problems ** Undesirable Citizens'' How the Children Grow! Selfish Boys and Silly Girls 13 THE HONEYMOON. 195 ^TX They are yet in the Honeymoon of mar- ^^1 1 ried life. The first few years of married ^\\ life are not, in any true marriage, the happiest. Our fathers and mothers understood that when they named the wedding anniversaries. The first few anniversaries they represented by such common things as cotton, paper, wood, tin, etc., — useful things, all of them, certainly, but not expressive of high values. If the wedded fellowship shall last for twenty-five years it be- comes silvery in its preciousness, if for fifty years, it becomes golden in its glory, and if, un- der Heaven's enriching blessing, for seventy-five years, it is only the surpassing worth and the un- rivaled brilliancy of the diamond that can rep- resent its rich, ripened love and fellowship. In the thriving city of Philadelphia, whose very name of Brotherly Love made it the most appropriate place for such an event, this vigorous and growing young Family celebrated their "Cot- ton" wedding in 1876. So proud were they of themselves and of what they had done, they in- vited all the other families of the world to come and see what a splendid success they had made in the experiment of Republican Housekeeping. And the other nations came. And there was cer- tainly something worth-while to be seen. And the Nations of the Old World rubbed their eyes 196 A FAMILY QUABREL. and gazed and gazed in amazed wonder; and said, **How did they ever do it, anyhow?" Of course in the raising of snch a large and rapidly growing family there have heen many things to contend against. They have had their full share of what might be called "family troubles," and they are still having them, and probably will have them for some time to come, particularly so long as so many people who do not like them, but who keep on coming to see them and persist so in remaining with them — well, there probably will be more or less trouble while this process continues. In every household where there are many children it is no easy task to nurse them through the mumps and measles and chickenpox and whooping-cough and a score of other complaints incident to growing childhood. This splendid Family has just fairly begun to raise and train its numerous and exceedingly varied progeny. In many instances it has had mighty poor material to work on. The only pos- sible justification of the product was that of Aaron to Moses in the case of the golden calf. "The people brought * * and there came out this calf." In other instances we have taken of the very filth and off-seourings of the earth, and in a generation or two we have turned out material THE HONEYMOON. 197 which was worthy of the approval, and the honor as well, of the world. There are social troubles and labor troubles and economic troubles and financial troubles. There are troubles with little business and trou- bles with '^ig business." We are about the only family of the earth that has enough "big busi- ness" to trouble over. In fact nearly all our troubles are about big things. The plan of this Family is on big lines, her leading sons are big men, the problems she must solve are big prob- lems — race-wide problems. Her estate is a big estate and it takes big brains to manage it. Big visions of world-service are breaking before her eyes. When God made a big thing like America he meant that she should not do small things. There is a lurking suspicion that God had a lot of big things on his hands to do, and then he made America and rested from all his labors. This may not be good theology — but this is not a work on theology. Some of the boys are selfish and want the whole apple. Some of the girls are silly and want to be pampered. And most of the boys and girls are sometimes naughty, and a few of them are always naughty, and all of them occasionally have to be spanked into order and obedience. But wait until thev have reached full growth 198 A FAMILY QUARREL. and have settled down to the serious hnsiness of "making America" — wait until they shall have put away childish things and have come to see and do as men. They may he counted on to make good. A former President of the United States spoke on a certain occasion of certain people as "Un- desirable Citizens." There are perhaps many such in America. But who are the men who most offend against desirable citizenship in Amer- ica? The men who bring the hot flush of shame to the fair face of American citizenship are the men who are suffering from the strong drinks of liberty and wealth to which they have had unrestrained access. They are suffering from the delirium of drinks they were not strong enough to bear. Whether they are on their head or on their feet they scarce can tell. They are only partially responsible for their deeds. But there are others who do know better and are responsible, and because they are stronger and know better they must use their strength and knowledge for the advantage of the State. High-minded, intelligent men must join with politicians and the Public Press to prevent the Great White Temple of American Civilization from being debauched by a carnival of blasphemy in which the demagogue is made a hero and the THE HONEYMOON. 199 mercenaries, whether of capital or of lahor, spew out their loud-voiced mouthings against both lib- erty and order. The political trickster must never be allowed to persuade the people that the rattle of the dice-box is the thunder of the voice of God. But the children are all growing, growing, growing up into a splendid type of American. They are working out the great problems of America. The probability is quite strong that they will be able to do it without the aid of any outside advices. People who do not understand our institutions, nor even understand us, cannot greatly aid us in working out our character and our destiny. We must have the courage to ac- cept full responsibility for what we are and for what we are to do, and then we must accept the responsibility for the doing of it. THE GOLDEN WEDDING. The Family ''Grown Up" What Gives Glory to "Old Glory" The World's Faith In This Family "Westward the Course of Empire" Adopted Children American Citizenship THE GOLDEN WEDDING. 203 ^JTTFive thousand years hence when they H^l I celebrate the Golden Wedding they ^1 1 will have something worth coming from the farthest fixed star to witness. Be- fore that time the family will be grown up. Gathered out of all the nations of the world they will have become full-fledged Americans. The world believes in America now; it j^ill be- lieve in it yet more by that time. The world be- lieves in our Union and in our Constitution. A wholesome respect is felt everywhere for the Old Flag. It is respected not chiefly because of the great Army and Navy standing back of it — those are amply able to defend it in any corner of the globe — but it is respected because, of the prin- ciples of liberty and order and personal oppor- tunity which it sjrrnbolizes. It is honored be- cause, to a degree not true of any other National Symbol, it stands for peace — world-wide peace. All Americans are proud of an ensign that has never lost a cause, nor ever espoused an un- worthy cause, nor ever floated over a battlefield upon which the Angels of Heaven need blush to contend for what it represents. Many will regard the War with Mexico as an exception, and no defense of that unfortunate affair is here intended. The Old Flag! There is only one ensign worthy to fly above it, and 204 A FAMILY QUABREL. that is the Banner of the Cross. The one born amid the carnage of battle and the groaning birth-pangs of a nation; the other falling in the darkness out of Heaven amid quaking rocks and unsealed graves and the agonies of the dy- ing God-Man. The one standing for the civil and intellectual freedom of the individual and the State, the other standing for the moral and spiritual emancipation of the races of the whole world. An American Citizen had better dis- honor the American mother who gave him birth than dishonor either of these two symbols which unitedly signify that which makes motherhood mean more than it means in any other place on the earth. American history has abundantly Justified the principles of the American Commonwealth. The strongest possible faith is expressed in our form of government as being, not only the best for the development of American character and re- sources, but as the best for the world. 'No less authority than Matthew Arnold, never suspected of partiality toward things x^merican, has voiced the prophecy that it is destined to become the government of the world. Bishop Berkeley, as- suming the role of a prophet, sang: THE GOLDEN WEDDING. 205 Westward the course of empire takes its way; The first four acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; Time's nohlest offspring is the last. Who that has read the progress of history will question the prophecy? The world's sceptre has passed successively westward from Persia to Greece, from Greece to Italy, from Italy to Great Britain. Nor will proud, imperial Britain be able long to stay its resistless western sweep. Than America, it can go no farther Westward. Beyond America lies the East. To borrow a figure : "Like the star in the East which beckoned the three Kings with their treasures Westward until at length it stood still over the cradle of the young Christ; so the star of empire, rising in the East, has steadily beckoned the wealth and the power of the Nations Westward until it stands still over the cradle of the young empire of the West, to which the nations are bringing their offerings." Drilled into a rock on the shore of Monument Bay in The Old Colony of Plymouth is this coup- let: ''The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends, And empire rises where the sun descends. 206 A FAMILY QUABEEL. Only an infant is that West today; but that infant shall one day become a man — a giant into whose strong limbs there shall have entered and united the strength of many nations and races. It is the business of the America of the present to see that when grown to manhood that fellow shall be an American. A man imbued with the best traditions of his great forbears and able to transmit to succeeding generations the best prin- ciples and the highest exemplification of Amer- icanism. Henry Ward Beecher was fond of say- ing that when an ox ate grass either the grass became ox or the ox would become grass again. This leads to the remark that, though having a family, quite satisfactorily large of their own, they have nevertheless adopted many alien chil- dren from varied lands. They have opened their doors of citizenship to the world. Without dis- cussing for a moment the wisdom or unwisdom of this world-wide hospitality which at least does credit to their ample and expanding hearts — this does need to be said with considerable emphasis at this time : those doors of citizenship are opened to all, but with the distinct understanding that whoever enters, enters of his own accord and with the well defined condition that allegiance to every other civil power is forever renounced. No hon- est man can take that oath of citizenship with THE GOLDEN WEDDING. 207 any mental or civil reservation whatever. The man who, of his own free choice, takes that oath in its true spirit, is born into a new civil life in which every foreign thing, whether of state or of church, is absorbed and assimilated by Ee- publican principles and purposes. We want no German-Americans and French- Americans, we want Americans. Of all perni- cious appeals made by politicians the most per- nicious of all is for the German vote and the Italian vote, etc. What do we want with Ger- man and Italian or any other such votes in America ? We want American votes and we w^ant to vote as Americans only. IS'or do we want any German sections nor Ital- ian sections nor any other such sections. The segregation of those of the same nationality so as to group them into communities of their own particular race prevents their assimilation as Americans. All possible sectional, as all possible racial, differences must be eliminated. Even state rivalries must ever be but competitions for pre- eminent national success. There must never be any mention of North or South, of Saxon or Celt, of Cavalier or Puri- tan, when we are talking politics with an Ameri- can citizen; for we are one people the land over, singing one song, and that song is Union; 20S A FAMILY QUABBEL. and knowing one Sovereign, and that Sovereign, the Will of the People exercised according to the spirit of the National Constitution. Ger- mans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Slavs, Italians, and all others may bring us their pecu- liar gifts of genius and we will cast them into the crucible of our free Republican institutions and there will come out a solvent for the fusing of our own sectional differences and racial pre- judices, and we shall have one Grand Union: The union of lakes and the union of lands, The union of states none can sever; The union of hearts and the union of hands. And the Flag Of Our Union Forever. SEVERAL AMERICAS. The True America America Not a New Thing Methods of History-Making The Higher Patriotism The Family Destiny 14 SEVERAL AMERICAS, 211 ^fW There are several Americas, planted on this ^^11 Continent. There is the America of the ^1 1 soldier, a blood-stained America, begirt with fire and sword, full of martial music and the dull throb of marching men. Then there is the America of noise and boast and strut and show and pride of display and glory, the America cheered by the crowd, the hip, hip hurrah, America — on parade on Fourth of July. Then there is the America of commerce in which the trader is king and the insignia of roy- alty is the dollar mark; a land of mines and fac- tories; a place of ports for ships — an America vast, busy, bedewed with honest sweat, but a stern, hard America, where a man may go naked among stacks of clothing and may die of starva- tion on the door-steps of the man who is dying of gluttony. Then there are the scientific America and the literary America and the social America and the financial America and a score of other Americas none of which constitute the true America. They are mere petty, incidental, artificial nationalisms clamoring for our allegiance, but chiefly wanting our purse and our ballot. But they no more con- stitute the real America than a wart upon the finger constitutes the real, soundly strong body. 212 A FAMILY QUABBEL. They are mere superfluous excrescences on the body politic. What is the true America whose glory shines through suns undimmed? What is the America whose fair fame has won renown and affection abroad? What is the America which has scat- tered blessings the world over? What is the America the very utterance of whose name has fallen like a word of hope into despairing hearts, and which has been a beacon to eyes bandaged by tyranny, and has drawn like a load-stone pil- grim feet long sore and aged in chains? What is this America? Let us make no mistake in the answer we give. It is the America of the Pil- grim Fathers and the framers of the Declaration of Independence. It is the America of the mis- sionary, the explorer, the emancipator, the phil- anthropist. It is the America of the Open Book, the free charter, the pious home, the sacred sanc- tuary. It is the America of the sacred Sabbath rest and the progressive Christian Faith, the America of the free school and the free press and the Christian college and the free thought and the equal suffrage. This is the America for which heroes and martyrs wrought, and saints suffered to make life possible and stir the grand enthusiasms of hu- manity. And this is our America. Around this SEVERAL AMEBICAS. 213 America our affections cling, for her our prayers arise, in her our faith and hope find anchorage. To love this America is to love all humanity through her, and to serve this America is to serve the world through her. If the reader of these pages has had the patience to follow them thus far he will doubt- less have observed one thing, that this America is not a new thing in the world. The history of the great institution which we proudly call The American Kepuhlic antedates the Flood. The materials out of which it has been built have been brought from all corners of the earth, some of them seasoned as the earth itself. Speaking of the Constitution of the United States Mr. Glad- stone said: "It is, as far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.'' But the Con- stitution was not "struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." The American Constitution is as old as the Hebrew Decalogue. The American Eepublic is not an accident. It is not something that suddenly happened. It is not the flowering of auspicious times. The Amer- ican Eepublic is a development, an evolution, a growth. It is the ripened harvest of the seed- sowing of the centuries. The faithful, patriotic finders of Betsev Eoss stitched together the 214 A FAMILY QUABBEL. materials of the American Flag, but Betsey Ross did not make the flag. The blood of countless battles fought for freedom on every continent has stained its bars, and the righteous reforms of five thousand years of struggle toward the light have whitened its stripes, while the com- mingled blue of all the skies under which the earth has rolled in all the centuries of human history furnishes the background for its growing and ever brightening constellation. Motley^s eloquent Avords are pertinent here: "The American Democracy is the result of all that was great in bygone times. All led up to it. It embraces all. Mount Sinai is in it, Greece is in it, Egypt is in it, Rome is in it, England is in it, all the arts are in it, and all the reformations, and all the discoveries." Then summoning the march of the world's great events from the be- ginning of time, he ranks them in order thus: "Speech, the alphabet, Mount Sinai, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Nazareth, the feudal system, the Magna Charta, gunpowder, the printing press, the mariner's compass, America." John Fiske, the historian, points out three methods of history making; conquest without in- corporation, the Oriental method ; conquest with incorporation, the Roman method; and conquest with incorporation and representation, supposed SEVERAL AMEBIOAS. 215 to be the English, or Western method. This last named method has been brought to its highest form in The American Republic. Here we have not liberty alone, but civil liberty in Union, and that not mere union but Confederated Union — it is Civil Liberty m Federal Union. This is the American ideal, and it is unique in this par- ticular, that, while it is a government by the people it is also a government by confederated States. To improve and perfect and make effective this ideal is the sublime task of American Patriotism. For the consummation of this Heaven-imposed task we need the highest kind of patriotism. We need a patriotism that can be hallowed at the alter and enshrined at the fireside, a patriotism as holy as a sacrament and as strong as an angel, a patriotism free from trickery and bombast and which, resting upon a foundation of righteous- ness, will breathe an air of nobility and develop the broadest and the deepest and the freest man- hood, and the most tolerant and unselfish and far-visioned statesmanship. We need a patriot- ism that will translate partisanship into public good, will hold conscience and honor above mere party loyalty — that will hold conscience, honor and party sacred to the service of the world through the public life and character of the na- 216 A FAMILY QUABBEL. tion. America never has lacked, and never will, that equality of courage that will face death on the battle-field when the Country's honor is threatened. The courage that is needed to-day is of a still rarer kind. It is the kind that will stay at home and live for the Country's good. We do not need a million young men to go out and die for Home and Native Land, but we never needed more than we need now a mil- lion young men of honor and integrity and cour- age for the right to stay right at home and de- vote this honor and integrity and courage to public affairs. The patriotism we teach is too external. The flag flies over the school house, and that is well. The children are taught to revere it, and that is well. But let there be not less talk about "Old Glory," but more talk about what it is that gives glory to the flag. High-minded men are losing faith in Democracy because they see it so often allied with low forms of political life. The political problem of corruption will be to a large extent solved when good men, who are not cowards, will give their own personal attention to a great number of things which they now are accustomed to turn over to a lot of self-appointed and self -rewarding fellows called "politicians." The treasons of peace are far more greatly to be feared than all the treasons of war. SEVERAL AMEBICAS. 217 There are riches thieves cannot steal — even from nations. Character is the one absolutely unassailable and unshrinkable asset — even for a nation. "America for Americans" was a slogan well meant, but unworthy of Americans. Amer- ica for the World is better. We have great re- sources and great powers and so much the greater will be our condemnation if we hold these great gifts selfishly for ourselves and refuse their un- selfish use for the betterment of the world. Our only right to them is that we shall pass them on to others. Circulation is their birthright. To surrender our American ideals of manhood and citizenship involves a sacrifice too costly to be thought of. The author is idealist enough to believe that when this Great Family comes once to see the meaning and the size of such a sacrifice she will utterly refuse it. "Land that we love ! Thou future of the world ! Thou refuge of the noble heart oppressed! ******** * Keep thou thy starry forehead as the dove All white, and to the Eternal Dawn inclined. Thou art not for thyself, but for mankind, And to despair of thee were to despair of man, Of man's high destiny. Of God." 218 A FAMILY QUAEBEL. Could any higher destiny be conceived for this distinguished and prolific Family than, when the King of Salem shall come in His Eoyal Chariot of Peace, under their ample roof may be found worthy representatives of the best civilizations of the world, clasping each other's hands in uni- versal fraternity, and all together kneeling to kiss His feet, acknowledging Him as "Christ Over All, God Blessed Forever." ** Where the war-drum throbs no longer, And the battle-flags are furled, In the parliament of man, The federation of the world.'' AUa 30 1913 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS